Stranded
by HarbingerLady
Summary: HPNaruto crossover. Harry Potter is transported to the shinobi world in the aftermath of the final battle with Voldemort.HBP compliant.Chapter 12 uploaded!
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and Naruto aren't mine

Auhor's Note: Heh, this is what? My 5th HPNaruto crossover? Lemme see…Ashura, HP and Shinobi Seer, Shipped Off, Shinobi Guards, and now Stranded. And I still have at least 2 other HPNaruto Crossovers that I haven't written yet.

As you can read, Stranded is similar with Shipped Off, only this time it was Harry alone that got 'shipped off' instead of Naruto and friends and 'stranded' in Naruto's universe.

I haven't read HBP, although from various fanfiction with HBP spoiler, I knew that Dumbledore is dead because of Snape, the Half Blood Prince (It's hard to imagine Snape as a halfblood), the greasy git created 2 new spells sectumsempra-or something like that and the other spell that I forgot its name. And then there is also these Hocruxes that have something to do with Voldemort's soul. Well, I guess I just have to read more HBP spoiler to see the entire story of HP book: 6 (I'd like to buy it, but there is only the English Language version and imported books are expensive, you know. Maybe I could buy HBP, if I don't go to internet for 2 weeks, but I don't think I can do it. Beside if I do avoid internet, I'll allocate my money to something else, like renting anime for example. Uh-Oh I think I got addicted with fanfiction and anime. Hey, that's not a new news!)

Anyway Harry is 19 years old, and his friends were all dead, leaving him alone. So that's mean: no Lupin, no Ron, no Hermione, and no other Weasleys. They are all dead.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know! I shouldn't make a new story when not even 1 of my stories is finished. But hey, can't resist the temptation! I wrote half of this chapter in my lesson. Hopefully you'll like it. Have fun reading.

Chapter One 

Harry sighed for…well, he didn't really count how many times he had sighed in theses couple of days. He only knew that it was a lot.

He didn't know what to do here. Everything was new for him. New country, new people, new custom, new language…that he didn't understand… One could wonder why he didn't just leave.

Well, that was his plan.

Only he didn't know how.

He could blame Voldemort for that. Stupid dark lord using a spell that would ensure him gone for good. Away from him and from ruining his plans that he had so many times thwarted.

At least he had ensured that the moron met his maker. He was sure that his curse hit him, judging from the last thing he heard before he was enveloped by the dark portal: Voldemort's high pitched scream. The same scream that he remembered hearing when he was only 1-year old.

Damn, he really loved to hear that scream. He really loved to see little ol' Tom suffered, to hear him scream as his soul ripped from his body. After what the dark wizard done to him, he felt that it was justified. He had finished his job. He has destroyed Tom's soul just like when he had done it when he was a baby. Only this time, he had made sure that he did it thoroughly. The death eaters wouldn't be able to resurrect him anymore. Not since his soul was reduced to nothing.

Whoever made the saying 'Payback is a bitch' was right.

Now if only he could find a way to go back to Hogwarts everything would be alright. Even if he didn't know what to do later there, since all of his friends had died in the war and the whole fiasco with the ministry. Should he went back to the life of a fugitive?

He had cried for hours when he woke up in the new place, not caring that the 2 people that took him to their home were watching him in uncertainty, not knowing how to deal with a hysterical young man. Hysterical indeed…he was crying in sadness for the loss of lives, crying in anger because of the madness on his lives, and then crying in happiness when he remembered that he had killed his destined enemy. He was sure that the family that had helped him thought that he was crazy…which might not be a mistake entirely actually.

He had no one now. All of them were dead because of Tom Riddle. The same Tom that he had killed with his own hands. He felt satisfied at first. Afterall he had succeeded in avenging all of his loved ones' deaths. But as time went on, he couldn't help, but feel empty. The satisfaction he felt days ago, didn't mean anything for him now. They were dead. And they wouldn't be back to life.

To make it short, he was simply lost.

Lost on what to do and of course not to forget that he was lost in the middle of… well he didn't know where exactly it was. The woman and her son that took care of him since he was stranded on this unfamiliar place couldn't tell him.

Or at least they tried to tell him, only he didn't understand what they were talking about.

Both sides were pretty frustrated by this. They couldn't communicate and it really made a strain on his nerves. He has tried to learn their language, but god damnit, the difference between their languages was too vast and he was only there for a couple of days, not even a week. He remembered about a language called Japanese that sounded like this language he encountered. Was he transported to Japan?

For some reasons, he really doubted that this was the case. Voldemort wouldn't waste his energy only to transport him to another country only to have him back to England in couple of days where he could once again ruin his carefully designed plan. Nope, nuh-uh. He didn't think so. His stomach lurched at the thought of where he actually was.

He should have learned some spells other than battle spells. This was starting to get ridiculous. He had huge arsenals of spells, but none of those were translation spells, not even the most basic one. Hermione was right, Harry decided. He dismissed her when she told him that he should try to learn spells other than spells for battle scolding him with a question of what he would do after the battle was over. Becoming an auror? Nah…he has told her that he wouldn't be an officer for a corrupt ministry.

Well, now looked what it had gotten him now! He really should more attention to what his best friend told him.

"Harry, dinner is ready" a feminine voice called him up. Harry turned around in surprise. He berated himself inwardly for not noticing her presence. He was trained by the infamous Mad Eye Moody himself to detect any presence nearby. He must be too deep on his thought.

The young wizard stood up and faced the source of the voice. It was a woman with a long black hair and looked as motherly as Molly Weasley was.

God, he missed her and her families.

"Hai" Harry answered in Japanese. This was one of the few phrases he had learned in these days. 'Hai' meant 'yes'. She smiled kindly at his response. Harry followed him to the table where his son was already waiting for them.

Just like his mother, the boy had black hair. The first thing that came in his mind when the boy said something rude to his mother—something that he didn't understand and it didn't look like that the boy was talking about him to his mom—was that he was a spoiled brat. The boy was ranting to him for a couple of days, telling him something that must had happened in his country. Too bad he didn't really understand what he was talking about. The boy left him after the idea that he couldn't speak his language went through his thick skull.

He didn't know much about the condition on this country because they had to use hand signs to understand each other especially when he didn't know their language. And that was not easy too.

From what he had gathered, there was a tyranny named God-Ou (pronounce as 'Gat-Ou' similar sound with Gato " Gatou) or something like that that control this place. The people were suffering under his rule and they couldn't do anything to bring him down because he had power and money.

Harry had tried to use minor legimency on the woman. And the images he saw confirmed his information he gathered or at least similar enough with what he was thinking about. From her mind, he also knew that there was another family member. The eldest of the family, Tazuna, who had gone a day before he was stranded on his place to somewhere, possibly to ask for help. The old man was apparently the one who mobilized the people of this place to fight against this God-Ou.

If only he knew what the persons in her memories were talking about, it would be better. He never tried to use legimency on her again afterwards, not wanting to disturb her privacy anymore.

"Arigatou" he stood up and helped her wash the dishes. The woman, Tsunami, still seemed impressed with his polite demeanor, even when he has done it ever since he woke up in her home.

Harry went back to his room, or at least the room where he currently stayed. He was really fortunate that he just had the time to go to Gringotts in disguise to take all of his money and possessions from his vaults because of big problem with the ministry (and he didn't want his vaults to be frozen). Harry paid her despite Tsunami's insistence of not taking his money.

The first time he gave her a pouch of gold coins, she nearly fainted at the sight. Obviously the situation in this place was really bad judging from her reaction.

Harry didn't know how to pay her aside from giving her gold. Tsunami was kind. She treated him when he was unconscious, brought him home, and gave him food and shelter. Him, an unconscious stranger with suspicious garment and deadly looking weapons. Normal people would be frightened and left him to take care himself. He owed her a debt for that. And he didn't think that mere money could pay that debt.

The dark haired wizard went over a silk covered blade. He untied the rope that held the purple silk cloth. Harry let the dark cloth dropped on the floor. His fingers running through the runes carved on the smooth dark colored surface. The red crystal let out soft red aura while the runes glowed golden. The blade length was 1 meter excluding its hilt. There was a magical focus red stone on the joint between the hilt and the sharp metal and there was a pair of demon wings in the front and a pair of angel wings on the back.

This was the blade that he made under the instruction of the blacksmith master, Kienne. The old dwarf refused to make him his magical sword and instead insisted that he made it on his own with his assistance. Well, not exactly assistance, since the dwarf only taught him how to make the sword, the steps, and some information, while he would have to finish the sword himself.

Harry made this blade with the hope to use it to slay dark creatures such as giants, werewolves, and vampires that followed Voldemort. The dark creatures were rallying to Voldemort's side at the time, and Harry couldn't afford it. Numerous dark creatures had met their end under this blade. It grew stronger as it slay more dark creatures and that was what frightened the dark creatures it met. And the only one who could control its power was only Harry, its maker. The only ones who could touch the blade were only those that had no ill will toward its master. The soul of the blade was cruel and bloodthirsty and only its master's touch could sooth its rage.

When Harry gripped the sword on his hand and fought, the soul of the blade merged with him. It guided him and gave him strength to use it properly. And damn, Harry was glad for that guide, because he never had a sword lesson when he made the blade. Without that soul that controlled his body when he fought with it, it was a surety that Harry's sword technique was as good as those beginners. Which meant that he sucked. Thankfully, he improved and the blade started to lessen its control on the dark haired wizard's body when they fought together.

Harry named his blade as Zeus, after the King of the Gods from Greece mythology.

The making of the blade's soul was the hardest step. Harry had to pour a part of his soul to a powerful mindless demon entity that Keinne's family had trapped centuries ago in an old rusty broken sword. Harry also had to imagine the blade's appearance while removing the soul of the demon from the broken sword to the red stone (and trying to hold it from escaping at the same time). To make sure that the entity wasn't as mindless as it used to be and obeyed Harry, the young wizard had to merged part of his soul with the demon's. It felt like hundreds of cruciatus were used on him at the same time when he did it.

Harry was put in coma for a month after he finished his blade. Keinne had told him that he was lucky that he wasn't dead. Only a few beings could actually withstand the ritual and came out of it alive. The old dwarf was laughing when he saw Harry's face. It was obvious that the blacksmith master didn't tell him the danger of using such ritual.

The ritual that he had undergone to create the blade was dangerous and most importantly: illegal and was banned for thousands of years, even before the time of the founders. Harry got lucky that Keinne's family held the last book in existence that contained the information of such ritual.

Now, that he thought of it again, maybe he probably for other pathetic and ridiculous reasons? The ministry was still corrupted and most wizards and witches were morons. Even if he had killed Voldemort, people would think of him as the next dark lord. Especially when he has already on run from ministry plus British wizarding society and death eaters plus the dark creatures.

People had branded him as coward and traitor when he went missing for few months after all of his friends' deaths. And when he returned, a blade with demon soul on his hand, they went…ah, berserk and demanded to have him persecuted before he became the next dark lord. They were afraid when they received the news that stated that he massacred packs of dark creatures.

Sheesh…he really couldn't believe the level of their idiocy. They should have thinking of the threats of Voldemort instead of worrying and fussing about him becoming the new dark lord.

Anyway the reasons for the death eaters to hunt him were simple. Harry had killed a big number of their army, especially the dark creatures that joined them. He crippled their power and they didn't want it to continue. Voldemort wanted the biggest threat of his life to be eliminated. Harry's merciless slaughter toward his army made the dark lord looked like a saint. Simply to say, the dark lord didn't want to have a rival, and having Harry as the most fearsome being in his death eater ranks instead of him, their own master, really did something on his nerves.

Sometimes, Harry wondered whether the demon soul inside his blade had affected him. He had become a cold and ruthless killing machine. Maybe not toward innocents, but he butchered those that dare to stand on the way of his vengeance quest toward Voldemort. Mad Eye Moody, one of the very few people that still believed on him, had once time warned him that his thirst for vengeance has blinded and controlled him. He nearly killed the ex-auror for that, but the old wizard's statement opened his eyes. He tried to control his rage afterwards, instead of letting his rage controlled him. He still killed the death eaters, but he no longer tortured them and instead trying to kill them as swift as possible. It was a small improvement, but still improvement nonetheless.

Harry still wondered till this time, what were exactly May Eye's thoughts of him now? The retired auror had become his mentor for some time and Harry respected him.

Harry sighed tiredly.

It was a hard work. Trying to ditch the ministry pursuers and killing death eaters, but he managed. And hey! He had just killed Voldemort. He has fulfilled his destiny and if the wizards and witches wanted to succumb on darkness with their shitty attitudes, so let it be.

Yep! He decided. Better not going back at all! Maybe he could lead a new life here in this new and unfamiliar place. No one knew him here.

Harry's thoughts went back to his beautiful, elegant, and yet also dangerous looking blade. He could blame the RPG games he played in the summer for the appearance of his sword.

It was a double-edged sword unlike Japanese sword that had 1 blunt side. When he concentrated his magic on the red stone, the sword would be separated into 3 parts. The middle stayed on its place, while the 2 others moved away from the middle part. When the transformation was over, the blade looked like the Poseidon's trident. Only its hilt was shorter than the blade itself. On this stage, the blade could let out a high electrical current that came from the red stone and then transferred to its middle blade part and lastly surrounding all parts, making as if there were thunders around it.

This was the other reason why Harry called it 'Zeus'.

Harry's ears perked up when he heard the door of the house was knocked (read: banged) loudly.

God damnit! He really should stop daydreaming or he would get killed soon!

Harry's blade transformed back to its 1st stage and he quickly covered the sword with the silk and tied it with a rope. He put back his sword knowing that he didn't sense killing intent from any of the people in front door.

Harry walked as silent as he could. He saw Tsunami opened her door anxiously. 5 guys appeared from the door. Harry's eyebrows rose when he saw the 3 children, 1 girl and 2 boys. The girl had such an unbelievable hair color. Pink! If he didn't know better he would think of her as metamorphagus and if he didn't notice that her hair roots had the same color, he would think that she dyed her hair. She had green eyes.

The boys however mesmerized him. There was darkness and pain hidden beneath their eyes. The first boy, a pale brunette with the eyes as dark as abyss had the softer version of his eyes when he when he was still in his vengeful mode. The other boy's appearance was different than his friend. He was blonde, and his eyes were the brightest blue he had ever found. Harry found himself staring at a child version of his. Those blue eyes hid the anger and pain of rejections, loneliness, and abuses. The same pain he had when he was a child and still was till now. Only these blue eyes looked more tormented than his emerald eyes ever were.

Just what happened to these boys that make them had the same eyes he had?

Harry caught himself staring at the boys and quickly shifted his eyes to the one that was being carried by the 2 boys. This person was older, probably in his middle age. He had silver hair (Harry was starting to wonder if the people here had genetic malfunction or something) and a mask covered his face. The man looked exhausted.

Harry's eyes lay on the last person. The old man was the one in Tsunami's memories, and Harry concluded that he was Tazuna, Tsunami's father and Inari's grandfather.

Didn't Tazuna go to ask help? What're the 4 people doing here then? Surely he didn't ask them to help him, even if one of them was an adult. The rest were children for God's sake!

"Tsunami…san?" 3 pairs of alerted eyes quickly stared at him. Harry would have laughed to see the boys dropped the man to the floor in surprise if he didn't notice that the 2 boys' hands held…daggers? The pink haired girl looked uncertain before she too drew a dagger from her hidden pouch.

Harry blinked.

"Tsunami, who is he?" Tazuna asked confusedly as his eyes darted between his daughter and the young man in front of him.

TBC…

I think that I didn't really organize the sentence and paragraphs really well here, but oh well! _shrugs._ I make some **Q**s and **A**s to clear some things!

Q: What's with the blade? 

**A: **sorry couldn't resist. I'm thinking of Gryffindor sword at first for Harry's weapon of choice, but I think that the sword is too flashy and is suited for display instead of battle, so I create this.

Q: If all vaults were with Harry, couldn't he just try to find the translation spells in 1 of his books? 

**A: **Unfortunately he had removed all the books and magical artifacts to one of his houses where he practiced the spells good for battle (it is when Harry went into hiding in order to train to avenge the deaths of his friends and before he became a fugitive). He didn't open the books unrelated with battle. And when he took the contents of all his vaults (and then met with Voldemort and had battle with him before being transported to Naruto's universe), there was no single book there anymore, only money, and jewels. That would be one of the things on Harry's 'regretted acts' list.

Q: Harry is a fugitive? 

**A: **I didn't make him as fugitive at first, but I needed something to make him cut the ties with his world. Yup, Harry won't go back to his world. I felt bad for the books he had left on his house…yeah, you hear me, I felt bad for the books. When I wrote a chapter, I let my hands and ideas guided me.

Q: Is the way Harry destroyed Tom has something to do with the Hocruxes? 

**A: **I haven't read HBP, and I only have a vague idea about it, so you can imagine it on your own.

Q: Harry is 19 years old? 

**A: **Yup, he is 19 years old in this fic. I wanted him to have times to study the spells, making his blade, and then goes in killing frenzy for quite long time, trying to avoid his pursuers and many other things.

**Q: Is this going to be a super Harry fic?**

**A: **Nay! This isn't. Harry still lacked many things. His sword skill was still improving. When the blade's soul took over his body, it put strains on his body if used for long and hard battle. Harry had to use his creativity (not like the creativity Naruto had in Lack of Motivation, okay?) and element of surprise to win from strong shinobis.

Q: When are you going to finish your other stories? 

**A: **Hm… that's the million-dollar question.

Spoiler for this story: Harry is invulnerable with genjutsu. Why? Because he didn't have chakra! From what I read in one of Naruto's manga chapter when Itachi fought against Naruto, genjutsu manipulated the chakra around the brain, so since Harry didn't have ahakra, so genjutsu attack is practically useless on him. The down side of it was that he couldn't use jutsus and his shield has a problem protecting him from jutsus that could go through his shield (he only has shields for physical and magical attacks).

Heh, the Hyuugas would be stumped in confusion to see him not having any chakra pathway, afterall every living creatures have chakra. He3x. Another universe, another rule! That meant that in this fic, the people in Harry's universe also didn't have chakra. Anywaaaaaaaaayyy! REEEVVVIIIIIIEEEEEEEEWWW!


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't think that I can make polyjuice potion that I need to change into J.K Rowling or Kishimoto Masashi, so I don't think I can convince any of Harry Potter or Naruto fans that I own those stories.

Author's Note: I have good news to spread to all of you! I have found my fanfiction ideas book that was misplaced sometime ago! Man, I'm really happy for that, because I'm too lazy to write all of my ideas back (plus there is no way I can remember all of those ideas written there). But I have bad news as well. It looks like that I won't be able to update my fics faster because starting from August 18, I have to go back for lesson full force (damn). I want to get better mark than last term and it seems that I will be busier than before. Anyway, I'll try to update all of my fics as quickly as possible.

About my holiday in my home, my family and my mom's friends (all counted 14 people including us) went to Karimunjawa island (it is in Indonesia if you're wondering) for 2 days. Good, I hate the voyage! It was bad for my stomach (and apparently to other passengers' stomachs too). Thankfully I didn't puke although the same couldn't be said to my mom and other passengers (they learned from their mistakes though and when they went back to Semarang city, Central Java using the same boat that literally made their stomachs churned, they took medicines before even went aboard the ship).

Not much I can say about my holiday, except that it wasn't really that great. Out of 27 islands, we only visited 5 of them. The only somewhat good time was when we were snorkeling in Menjangan Kecil Island. Thankfully I wasn't injured when I swam, cuz there are many urchins there (and many of them were big. Caution: you should bring scissors or something sharp to cut those spines). Speaking of urchins, do you know that they are called 'bulu babi' in Indonesian? I mean, common! In English it is translated as 'pig fur'! I will understand if they call it 'bulu landak' or 'porcupine fur', but really, pig? I don't think I have seen any pig that have fur as long and sharp like those urchins I saw. I admit that the scenery inside the sea there was nice and all, but I also wondered whether there were sharks there or not. Plus 2 times stomachaches in 2 voyages were too much for me to handle just to see that. I'm kinda disappointed with the lack of accommodation there, though I guess that being with all of the members of my family there was a definite plus. And remembering that my brother's hand was bitten by a clown fish-yes, a clown fish! Can you believe it! The clown fish was in the same pool with 6 or so tame sharks (I don't know the name of its species only that it wasn't wild like white shark and its size was no more than a meter. The sharks were taken care in a small pool (really small, not a big pool like I first thought, very disappointing) in Menjangan Besar Island) and yet my brother was bitten by the small colourful fish instead of by the sharks. Of course it was because my bro disturbed the fish and the anemone where it resided (Geez, he really couldn't keep his hands off to himself).

Anyway the 2 days trip wasn't satisfying at all, especially when you had to endure 2 times 3.5 hours of bad voyage (in the 1st voyage most of the puking passengers threw up at the same time, that it was funny to remember now—can't say that it was funny when I was with them because I also had a bad case of stomachache) in those 2 days. Going back there is a definite no, no, except if I can spend more than 2 days there, so I can explore more and of course better accommodations and professionalism from the guide (which was bad, I tell you).

Btw, sorry for the late update (as you know I said that I would come back at August 18), but I have to sort out my lesson schedule, cuz it is messed up and also for other reasons that I won't bother to tell.

Oh well, just read now, I won't hold you anymore than this.

Chapter Two 

Tazuna didn't know what to say about the young man in front of him. Despite the relaxed pose the dark haired man had, something about him screamed 'Piss me off and you'll end with none of your limbs intact!'

Tazuna admitted that he wasn't a shinobi and that he didn't have the honed instinct that many shinobi seemed to have, but as a human being he had a…survival instinct. And it was exactly that instinct that warned him to be cautious in dealing with this man and to not do something that would land him in the wrong side of him. Tazuna shivered. This was just like the feeling he got when Zabuza radiated off his infamous killing intent, only this time the man in front of him didn't even need to move a muscle to make him felt like a rat trapped with a snake that was ready to bite it.

"-ry Potter (1) ," he snapped his head to his daughter. It seemed that he was too immersed with his thought to hear her talk.

"What did you say?" her daughter sighed.

"Let me introduce you. His name is Harry Potter," that was certainly not a common name among people in Wave. Hell, he would even bet that it wasn't common at all in the whole continent! "I found him unconscious in the beach 5 days ago and brought him home and treated him."

Tazuna would have screamed in anger at his daughter's act of kindness when she finished talking, if not for the young man's presence.

How could she! Bringing a stranger under their roof! What if he was Gatou's man!

Well, something told him that he wasn't one of the bastard's lackeys, but that was beside the point!

Mustering his courage and taking a deep breath, he turned to the young man in the room. Dangerous or not, he didn't want the man to think he was the boss here. He opened his mouth and almost said something when he stared at the endless pit of a pair of emerald eyes stared back. The green eyes were so deep and intense that he almost forgot to breath when he gazed at them. Gulping, he proceeded once more.

"Listen here, young man," the young man blinked. " I don't care if my daughter took care and trust you, but believe me that if you dare to harm my family you'll pay for that! Do you get it?" he shouted the last part with his last courage, before taking a step back.

"Er…" the young man looked confused and threw a pleading glance to Tsunami.

_That _threw him out of guard. Of all things he expected the young man would react with his warning, this wasn't it. He expected anger, or even amusement, not confusion! Infact it seemed that he didn't understand a bit of what he was talking abou—.

"Uhm…I forget to tell you that he also didn't understand our language, dad" was his daughter's only explanation.

Well, that did it. Tazuna felt like he looked like a living tomato right now. He had gathered all of his courage to warn the young man, and the said young man didn't even understand what he was talking about. How…embarrassing.

"WHAT DID YOU MEAN HE DIDN'T UNDERSTAND OUR LANGUAGE!"

And that blonde kid really should try to shut his mouth for once! He forgot completely about the genin team he had hired.

"Just like what my daughter said, brat!" Tazuna cursed inwardly for this kid' horrible tact.

"B-BUT HOW COULD HE DIDN'T KNOW IT?"

BAM! A large bump was formed on the blond boy's head courtesy of the ever-terrifying pink haired girl. Tazuna sweat dropped even when he had seen it many times during their journey, while Tsunami looked horrified at the blatant violence, which came from the pink haired girl.

"SHUT UP, NARUTO!"

"BUT SAKURA-CHAN!" he whined. The other genin, Sasuke, scoffed at the embarrassing act, but still held his guard, wary eyes locked with the dark haired young man.

Tazuna took a discreet glance—or at least what he thought discreet— at the emerald eyed man and found that he seemed to be amused with the kids' acts. He breathed a sigh of relief. Fortunately, he didn't find them annoying and kill them. He had paid the team, and it wouldn't do well if he killed them before they completed their job.

/Hi, my name is Harry Potter/ the young man introduced himself.

"What?" the bridge builder asked confusedly. The only thing he understood was the name.

"Um…name is…Harry Potter?" he asked unsurely with heavy accent. Obviously he was having difficulty with the language.

"He's just introducing himself, dad," Tsunami assured him.

"Oh…" he quickly snapped out of his thought when he realized that he was staring. "Tazuna (AN: what is Tazuna's surname?), I'm Tsunami's father." The young man in front of him nodded, before he turned to the other guests with questioning gaze.

"Who're they, dad?" his daughter asked.

"Um…the pink haired girl is Haruno Sakura," he pointed at the only female among team 7 members. "The loudmouth there—"

"I'M NOT A LOUDMOUTH!" came the interruption.

"—Is Uzumaki Naruto, the gloomy boy over there," Sasuke glared at Tazuna succeeding in making the bridge builder take a step back nervously. "Is Uchiha Sasuke. And the man…in the floor," he sweat dropped at the sight of unconscious Kakashi below him, wondering how the jounin ended up there. "Is Hatake Kakashi.."

Tsunami smiled kindly at the four (even though the other one was currently knocked out) alleviating the children a bit. "I take it they're the ones you bring to help us?" Tazuna nodded.

"This is the help you told us about!" they turned to see a scoffing Inari who apparently woke up from his sleep.

"Inari, don't be rude to our guest!" Tsunami scolded.

The boy ignored his mother and ran back to his room, but not without shouting, "They will only get themselves killed!"

"Who's the brat?" Naruto glowered at the rude boy.

"He's my grandson, Inari," Tazuna sighed. Damn, maybe it was a bad idea to hire this genin team. The blond boy couldn't shut his mouth. Add his stubborn grandson, that wasn't a good mix… Oh and yeah, not to forget the newest dark haired addition to his household. He was doomed.

0-0 0-0 0-0

Harry looked at the bundle of his glowing sword confusedly. He could feel that his sword was becoming restless and feeling threatened.

The silk cloth reduced the brightness of the glow, but anyone could still see dimming light from it. A quick glance to the boys beside him confirming that indeed they saw this. The dark haired boy, Sasuke, looked at his sword curiously, while the blond boy frowned warily and clutching his belly. Sasuke turned at him expectantly, Naruto came secondly.

"What is that?" he asked…no! More like demanded. Geez, kids these days… Harry rolled his eyes inwardly.

"My," Harry frowned, trying to find the right word. "…Weapon."

"May I see it?"

The wizard, understanding exactly what the boy wanted (even if he didn't understand his language), contemplated for a moment before nodding. Perhaps, this way they wouldn't be as suspicious of him if he let them see it. Beside those two would be his roommates for some time, considering there weren't many rooms in the house, so he might as well let them see his sword. That way hopefully they wouldn't be curious and touched his sword without his permission. Zeus would certainly not like it. "No touch!" Sasuke nodded.

When he had de-clothed his sword, he heard 2 sharp gasps. He couldn't help but smirk proudly. That was the same reaction that people in his world let out when they saw his sword for the first time.

The sword's glow dimmed a bit when its master touched it, but it still glowed nonetheless. Harry frowned and turned to the boys behind him. They were apparently awed by his sword although the dark haired boy concealed it better than his friend, but the blond boy… he also looked queasy at the same time and rubbed his belly worriedly. This attracted Harry's attention. Whatever made his sword wary has something to do with the whiskered boy.

Whisker… He wondered about those whiskers he had on his cheek. It didn't look like battle scar and he didn't think there was a birth sign shaped like that. Harry raised his eyebrow in confusion. Perhaps it was only a genetic malfunction that people here seemed to have (AN: read chapter one about it if you forgot).

Harry covered his sword with the silk again and put them beside his bed…then again…he glanced at the 2 extra futons near his bed. He moved his sword and put them on his bed. Best not taking chance to have these teenagers got too curious for their own good and touched Zeus without his permission.

"Sleep," was the only thing he said to the children before he slipped into his bed and closed his eyes.

0-0 0-0 0-0

Naruto couldn't sleep. He turned his body and watched the dark haired stranger's back in silence. The demon inside him was restless.

Something that had never happened before.

And it definitely had something to do with the strange glowing sword that this Harry had. The sword was unlike anything he has seen before. It was a double-edged sword instead of the usual Japanese (AN: I don't think that the place was in Japan, but oh well) sword shape. No shinobi in their right mind would put a jewel on their weapons (and what a big jewel it had), except if it were used for display, which he really doubted. The sword looked elegant and unearthly yet also dangerous at the same time.

He didn't think that the older man was evil, but he was still wary. Anything that had to do with the fox demon sealed inside him was definitely not good news. He really didn't know what to do. Kakashi-sensei was still knocked out and didn't even wake up when he and Sasuke dropped him to the floor in surprise, so he couldn't ask for his opinion. He really hoped that he would awake soon. He should've known what to do.

Naruto turned at his friend beside him. He could see that he also hadn't slept yet although he closed his eyes, not that he thought that Sasuke-teme could sleep when a stranger that they didn't know whether he was an enemy or not was in the same room with them.

He couldn't ask for his opinion regarding Kyuubi… Still that didn't stop him wondering about what his dark haired comrade's thinking about him was.

0-0 0-0 0-0

Feeling that Naruto has slept, Sasuke opened his eyes and turned his back from Naruto and watched the older man's back. His gaze traveled the man's back and he immediately scanned him as best as he could.

The man whose name was Harry had athletic built though not overly as well built as some shinobis who were taijutsu specialists. He was a bit on the lean side and was almost as tall as his silver haired sensei. His hand looked strong though and he had a suspicion that it was because the man trained to use his big sword.

And speaking of that sword…

The sword was elegant, he had to admit. Even though he thought that no proper weapon should be made like a sword that fit to be displayed. It was a work of art. He also noticed from his brief observation that he didn't recognized the metal the blade was made of… which was rather disturbing to know. He didn't know what the sword was capable of and why the man had a sword shaped like that, but it certainly peaked his interest, especially when it could glow.

The owner of said weapon also attracted his interest too, long before he even knew the existence of such sword. The man had been able to sneak upon them without them knowing until he practically made them knew his presence there. The man's presence also gave him unease feeling at first before it gradually disappeared.

And his eyes… his dark striking green eyes gazed at him intently as if he could read his mind, which was absurd, since not even his family's bloodline, sharingan, the infamous doujutsu, could do that… Perhaps he was too exhausted by the journey. There was no way that man could read minds.

That he couldn't understand their language was also causing a great concern on his mind. How could that man not understand their language? It was used in the whole world! He wondered if the man has anything to do with this Gatou person, but he doubted it. The man didn't look like someone who was after money and the like…although one of shinobi's rules was never to judge a book from its cover.

The man was a puzzle. A puzzle that he intended to solve with any means necessary. He didn't like being in the dark of something. It grated his nerves.

Clutching his kunai closer, Sasuke closed his eyes and slept. He would be ready incase the man did something suspicious.

TBC…

Hey, chapter 2 is actually done! Now hand off your reviews, buddy!

(1) I write Harry's name not in something like 'Hari Potteru', but 'Harry Potter' because it is easier to write. Not trying to offend Japanese, but most of them pronounce English really, really bad.

One of you told me that he was having difficulty telling my entire HPN crossover apart. Well…he's not the only one…infact I also have difficulty too. That's why I need to read the precious chapters before I write the next chapter (_blush_)

Q: Why did you name the sword Zeus?

A: I know that it's not creative. At first I want to name it Thor (which wasn't exactly creative too), but for some reasons (that I don't remember) I decided against it and chose Zeus for the name.

Q: If Harry doesn't have chakra, shouldn't he be dead?

A: It depends. Do you know star wars? The one that tell that all living being have medichlorian or something like that? I think that different universe can have different rule and that if I cross HP and SW there is a possibility that Harry doesn't have medichlorian and thus can't use 'the force'.

Q: Talking about genjutsu manipulating chakra…Genjutsu in general or just Tsukuyomi?

A: I think that it is genjutsu in general.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Unless my name is Kishimoto Masashi or J.K. Rowling then Harry Potter and Naruto aren't mine.

Author's Note: Okay…some of you ask me to have Harry could use chakra and your reasons although I think that those are good, I'll still stick with my idea: meaning that Harry can't use any chakra (I believe that some of my HPNaruto fics were using this too, while in others shinobi can use magic). If I make Harry super-powered the story would be boring, ya know.

Chapter Three

Harry gaped in disbelief at the sight in front of him. He knew what he looked like: a man gaping like an idiot. With that thought, he quickly regained his set of calm mask. But he knew that the silver haired man has noticed his slip in that brief moment. His students didn't seem to notice it too busy watching their sensei's example for which he was grateful. One didn't want to look like an idiot in front of a bunch of younger kids.

He couldn't believe it! How? This was so confusing. How could he walk ON the tree so casually! Harry didn't think the jounin use any glue to stick himself, plus he walked on it so the possibility of using super glue that could hold human's weight was crossed out. And he certainly knew that they didn't have an ounce of magical blood in their vein. He knew that because they lacked the aura that magical people had.

And he didn't know any magic that can make someone could walk on trees. Sure there was sticking charm, but that wouldn't enable wizard to walk on it!

That meant that these people had ability that was different from wizard.

Which made him really nervous about it, because judging from the aura of the people around him, even the normal civilian like Tsunami, all of them had potential to be able to do things such as what just happened in front of his eyes, even if this potential was varied among people. Most wizards would call them, as muggles because they lacked the ability to use magic, but even if it was true they were certainly weren't your normal everyday-muggles.

The dark haired wizard watched as the children especially the blond kid were awed by the display. It seemed that they didn't know they could do that and was very eager to try it. This also meant that unless someone trained to use this ability, they wouldn't be able to do that.

It was different from wizard who could do accidental magic when they were on stress. Or perhaps he just hasn't seen anyone who could do that without any training, afterall he was only there less than a month and only in this small region.

Now, he really believed that he wasn't even on Earth at all. Ugh, his life really sucked!

Harry was determined to make a living here where no one knew him some days ago. It was meant to be a new refreshing life! And just after he was determined to do that, someone decided to drop a bombshell.

He was wary to be around people with unknown abilities. At least among wizards and magical creatures, he knew what to expect from them and thus he wouldn't have to be so surprised. But this certainly required a more thorough research. He couldn't just waltz around among strangers without knowing what to expect from them.

The dark haired wizard glanced back to the boys who tried to outdo each other, while their pink haired teammate was already up in the branch after she performed the task quite nicely. A small smile tugged on his lips when he saw the boys were arguing.

Harry sighed. He shouldn't just stand there. Tsunami has asked him to ask him to call them for lunch using some clumsy hand signs and he really should do the task. "Tsunami, lunch, ready," he shouted to catch their attention. Kakashi and Sakura looked up, while the other two didn't seem to hear him as they continued to glare at each other.

"Thank you, Harry-san," the older man said. Harry nodded and turned his back.

Perhaps…he needed to use legimency to understand just what were the abilities. It certainly was an easier and faster way to acquire the answer to his growing questions.

With that in mind Harry walked toward the house he stayed at for a few weeks.

0-0 0-0 0-0

Kakashi glanced at the younger man's back and turned to his students. "Alright kids, you have heard what he said. The training will be adjourned until we eat."

"Hai, Kakashi-sensei," they chorused. The boys stared at each other for a moment and then as if they reached a conclusion from their silent conversation, they broke into a run and raced to get Tazuna's house faster than the other. The only girl in the team cried out, asking them to wait for her, and she too run to catch the boys.

Kakashi shook his head in amusement. 'Children are always be energetic.' The boys passed the walking man they knew for days without a glance backward, too busy to be the first one to arrive at Tazuna's house. Only Sakura stopped in front of him and greeted him before taking off once again.

Truth to be told, Kakashi was uncertain on what to do to the younger man. He has asked Tsunami info about him, but there wasn't much she could tell aside that his name was Harry Potter, he couldn't speak their language, she found him unconscious in the beach with strange clothes, a polite young man and was apparently wealthy for he gave her valuable gold so easily.

The man was a wild card. As much as he wanted to trust the young man, he couldn't. A shinobi's trust couldn't be given easily. A misplaced trust could be deadly and resulted in the shinobi's death.

Kakashi himself had his own judgement about him. The first time he met him, even though he could see that he was a polite man, he could see deep shadows lurked behind his emerald green eyes. His eyes were the eyes of a warrior or a soldier, which meant he wasn't a normal civilian, beside being polite didn't mean that he wasn't a psychopath although he really doubted it. Still, there was a chance that he was an enemy and he couldn't afford to drop his guard around him.

Who knew if the man was actually an enemy who was good actor? He certainly didn't know and for that he would keep an eye on that man.

The man was mysterious. When he first woke up from his chakra depletion sleep, Naruto has confided him some interesting info about him that proves the man wasn't normal. The blond boy said that Harry's glowing sword made the fox demon inside him restless.

Imagine his shock when he heard that. He knew that Naruto was a kind of person that would always bottle his own problem, but apparently the boy himself didn't think that he could handle it and told him about it. Kyuubi was a sore object of conversation for the boy for reason that was obvious and to hear Naruto talked about it was surprising. Add to the fact that Harry had a not-so-normal-looking sword which could glow like a light bulb that could make the so-called greatest demon restless, Kakashi was stumped.

Just what could make a demon like Kyuubi felt restless?

He really hoped that the man didn't turn out to be an enemy. It was already bad to have Zabuza and Gatou's men as their opponents, he didn't need to add the owner of the sword that could make even a great demon like Kyuubi agitated, to his list of enemy. Since Zabuza was rescued by his subordinate that posed as Mist hunter-nin, there was no doubt that the missing-nin would try once again to fight against him. And that time, there was a possibility that the man would have something prepared for their fight.

Kakashi sighed. This mission didn't turn out to their favor at all. He didn't think that his team was ready for a mission that turned out to be a high level mission. If they came out of this alive he would make sure to make a training schedule that would make even Gai proud of…not that he wanted the weird shinobi proud of him of course. That meant that he had to cut his time reminiscing Obito and actually for once didn't come late. Truth to be told if it weren't because of the newcomer's presence he wouldn't even think of it. He was a mysterious stranger and he wanted his students to at least have a chance to escape or perhaps hold him out if the man turned out to be their enemy, though it was unlikely they could handle him alone. In his opinion the children were still too weak to be exposed to all dangers outside Konoha right now.

With that in mind, Kakashi followed his running students. The strange behavior of the younger man when he saw him walked on the tree was soon forgotten as he tried to reorganize his plan for the three genins.

0-0 0-0 0-0

The lunch was rather eventful as Inari shouted at the shinobis like usual, only this time the blonde boy looked so enraged and said things that was surely struck Inari's cords, because he ran with eyes full of tears. Harry would like to comfort the boy, but he didn't know how to do that seeing he didn't understand just what was making the boy cried like that and he didn't know the right words to comfort him. Not knowing the language he needed was a pain in the ass, because he couldn't do much about it. If he wanted to travel around, he would need to know their language or he would get in trouble.

The wizard needed to workout his muscles and refined his sword skill after few weeks not exercising at all. Back in his room shared with 2 other occupants, Harry took his covered blade and headed to the kitchen where he was sure that Tsunami would be there.

"Tsunami, go, outside, back, night," he told her. Not waiting for response, the dark haired young man exited the house and headed to a place in the opposite of where he knew the children and their sensei were.

He soon arrived at a small lake that he found 5 days ago and quickly ran some laps around it before he took a swim for half an hour. It felt great to move his stiff muscles and he definitely needed to keep in shape if he wanted to improve his sword skill. Beside, a healthier wizard means being able to control magic better and bigger magic reserves. The wizards that he met so far weren't really in good shape. They thought that magic could solve all their problems. They couldn't even run 1 lap of a quidditch pitch without breathing hard or collapsing from exhaustion. They didn't understand that running skill could very well determine their lives when they couldn't apparate or using portkey because of some wards. And running also gave them stamina and endurance needed in the long battle. Even Moody relied too much on his magic. Harry thought that perhaps it was just the way they were being brought at by their parents.

Although he was rather glad that the ministry aurors and death eaters didn't think it was important since it was making it easier for him to either ran from them or cripple their forces.

Harry used a drying charm to dry himself when he was out of the lake. He picked Zeus from the ground and started to train with it. The demon entity inside it was whispering ways to improve his sword skill and Harry knew to trust the voice. The demon was bonded with him and obeyed him and thus wouldn't try to harm him. As long as the sword wasn't destroyed he wouldn't be able to die because the life force between them was tied. It was similar with the horcruxes actually, now that he thought of it, but instead of separating his soul and put them on objects, Harry merged half his soul with a demon entity. Even if he died it would be a temporary death and the sword would heal his crushed soul and revived him.

It has happened once afterall. At that time he was alone fighting against a pack of werewolves that served Voldemort, 3 Trolls, and an acromantula. He was still new in the hunting department at that time and still was reckless. He thought that he had killed all of them with Zeus in control and thus he was careless. A werewolf that he thought was died but obviously wasn't, drove a dagger through his heart. He died while his spirit was thrown out of his body. The demon healed his wounds and soul in incredible speed, and keeping it alive long enough for him to be able to heal him, An hour later he was revived and then beat the living shit out of the werewolf who was so terrified to see him alive after getting a fatal blow in his heart.

Voldemort knew about it after some months of research and tried to destroy the sword in many occasions, but not many things could destroy a demon sword. The only time he almost managed to destroy the sword, Harry thwarted his plan. He destroyed the items Voldemort had that were needed to destroy Zeus afterwards. Perhaps it was why the psychopath dark lord used that spell to transport him somewhere else where he wouldn't be able to ruin his plans. Too bad for him that Harry managed to kill him at the same time he cast the spell.

Harry swung his sword in powerful motion. Beads of sweat fell from his body. His technique was getting better, but he still wasn't strong enough to handle the sword weight. He really hoped that he could be fast enough and wouldn't need Zeus to take control of his body. His body would be stiff and sore for hours afterwards, but the numbers of killings he made when he was controlled surely paid the price even if he had to hide from both ministry and Voldemort to have a few resting hours he needed to make sure his body would be able to recuperate. And Harry was good at hiding.

Harry panted. He leaned on a tree for support. He was really exhausted and needed to rest for a while. He put aside his sword and laid on the soft grass with a relief sigh.

He started to think about the event happened in the afternoon.

That ability…if he wanted to survive here, he better quickly found a way to counter it. He doubted that the people here could only walk on a tree. Those four looked like a part of mercenary, and mercenary was ready to be hired for anything, so he doubted that it was the only ability they had.

He compared them with the mercenary in his own world. Usually a mercenary practiced weapons, martial arts, poison, stealth, and infiltration. The older man was probably the teacher, while the three were mercenary in training. If they were training than that meant they had a guild as their gathering place. Those metal bands with spirally thingy carving they wore must have something to do with the guild, a symbol perhaps.

That Kakashi even if he appeared aloof, there was something about him that couldn't make him drop his guard. He was obviously strong, but he arrived in Tazuna's house exhausted. An attack by people as strong as him perhaps? Too bad he couldn't see the fight, it would help him to understand this place and its people' abilities better.

Sitting up, he reached for the silk cloth and wrapped it around his sword. The sky was already dark and he needed to get back to Tsunami's house. He stood up taking 5 medium fishes he caught when he was swimming and headed back toward the poor town without sound.

The town was pitiful. There wasn't much to see except that it was all about poverty. The situation here reminded him of places in Britain after Voldemort succeeded in overthrowing the Order of the Phoenix. The muggles and magical societies outside Britain barricade and sealed off the country, afraid to have the dark lord attacked them. It was a mess at that time. None gave help to England. The country (the magical part) didn't have any ally after the Brititsh ministry offended them. The British magical society instead of asking for help and apologize was enraged and insulted them. Needless to say that wasn't a good move. The muggles secluded in an area heavy of security and many abandoned Britain and took refuge in other countries. There were specific tests needed to be passed to get into another country if they were from Britain. If they were muggles and without any charm put on them, they would be allowed, people with magical blood, weren't allowed to enter other countries.

Needless to say, magic was already revealed to the eyes of muggles. All countries had to handle the chaos for months before muggles calmed enough and started to accept or reject it. Some illegal muggle factions, especially in Britain were established to kill wizards and witches they met on sight and the governments had to make new security departments to handle magic cases. The Britain was hit the hardest as the muggles were attacked in some big attacks that killed many of them before the fact that magic was real was revealed. That made them extra-vengeful in handling wizards and witches. And the government couldn't do anything to contain its citizen, since almost all of them hated magic. Researches about magic were soon began with the subjects were wizards and witches, and magical creatures they caught dead or alive and in no time the muggles put extra precaution that would make magical creatures and wizards got nasty shock if they entered a designed area. Wizards and witches were hunted in Britain just like what happened in Salem centuries ago.

Harry could say that it was definitely making his life more interesting. Voldemort obviously didn't expect that muggles could perform anything like that and had to divert his full attention from Harry. The aurors that were at first searching him like crazy were forced to abandon their 'holy' mission to make a safety guard against muggles attacks instead. It also gave Harry a time to breathe as 2 forces that hunted him had to defend this time and since Harry was alone he was better in hiding than big groups like Death Eaters or ministry. The British wizards and witches that were at first screaming for his head now crying out for help.

It certainly didn't help muggleborns' standing in the magical society. And then, the muggleborns—last time he heard the rumors—being hunted by 2 sides just like him, much to his irony, since they were part of the forces that hunted him too, planning to bind and forgo their magic and reinstated back as muggles.

And it was through them and many other prisoners the news about Harry came. Harry had to use every little trick he had on his sleeves to avoid detections. With Zeus' help, he bypassed the muggle security and tore through it like a paper and disappeared as quickly as he came. He didn't want to find out what they would do if they succeeded in capturing him. Harry was well known in the muggle society as Phantom, because he could blend in shadow nicely and could slip from their guard easily. Although some of the muggle factions were determined to include him in their causes because he was hunted by those who they hunted, Harry preferred to fight alone. Beside he couldn't believe that none of the members of those factions didn't want him dead or being experimented after he finished off Voldemort.

People could call it immense paranoia.

Harry called it self-preservation.

Beside he wasn't as bad as Moody who had drilled all of those 'Constant Vigilence!' to his brain anyway.

His ancestor house--full of wards that prevented three sides from finding him—became his sanctuary and Harry was tired of it all. That was why he challenged Voldemort to duel in the open with invitations sent to all forces to oversee the battle. The battlefield was the ruined Surrey where he spent half of his life there. Muggles, magical creatures, wizards and witches all surrounded the pairing. All were tense with the presence of their enemies. The muggles stayed behind Harry since the magical society stood behind Voldemort.

Harry smirked at the irony. It was ironic to see them reconciled with the one who killed their families in the first place.

'The enemy of my enemy is my ally (AN: or is it 'friend'?)' seemed to describe the situation accurately. Though death eaters were their enemies at first, they made a truce to go against the bigger threat of their existences: the muggles. In Britain, it was now technology vs. magic, while outside it negotiations and conferences were being made between both parties for hopefully a better world.

All in all everything was chaos in Britain.

Harry didn't know whether him killing Voldemort had some impacts to the chaos. And he didn't really want to know about it, even if he sometimes wondered the aftermath of the battle. He was somewhere else now—free from all of them—where he could make another life that hopefully wasn't as bloody as his past life.

Harry snapped out of his thought and glanced back to the pitiful town. He didn't doubt that the poverty of this town was the work of this 'Gatou'.

Harry raised his eyebrow when he saw a young girl, probably about 5 years old tugged his clothes. She opened her small fragile hands fearfully. Harry's heart ached at the sight. He reached for a pouch contained 25 galleons and gave it to her with a smile. The black haired girl's eyes were so wide when she saw the gold inside it. He chuckled and ruffled her hair before leaving her.

He looked back when he heard her thanked him loudly. For safety precaution, he put a charm there to make stealing it was impossible.

He hoped that it was enough until the bridge was finished and trade ran smoothly, so the town will grow prosperous.

And he intended to make sure the bridge would be finished.

TBC…

Another chapter of Stranded! Hopefully you'll like it. A Question that all of you readers MUST answer: should I make a prequel of Stranded about Harry when this fic is over or not? It won't be a crossover though. And of course you already know the outcome and spoilers of that fic if I actually wrote it, but it will be in different perspective (not as a reminiscence only like he did in this fic) and more complete. The idea about the dealings with muggles is done in this chapter. I didn't think that I'll include muggles too when I made the first 2 chapters. I don't really have a plot for any of my stories except for some fics that have a plotted ending (though not plotted storyline in actuality). I let my hand and brain guided me and when an idea popped on my mind I always try to include it in my fics to make it much more interesting.

I will try to include some flashbacks about Harry's past in Stranded.

Read and of course don't forget to Review! R&R!


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Both Harry Potter and Naruto aren't mine, but this fic and its plotline are mine.

Author's Note: Sorry for the long wait. Not! It isn't like my fault I have so many assignments that gave me headache. I had to hand over 4 assignments that are due to Monday and Thursday. Bleagh T-T Not to mention that I confused this fic with my other fic: Lack of Motivation (I thought that Kakashi request another team in this fic) and so I had to rewrite some parts of this chapter, and it was hard since the team Kakashi requested were involved in the battle. _Sigh…_Man, my life sucks!

Chapter Four

Harry chopped the vegetables in front of him expertly cutting them in the same size. He put the vegetables into the saucepan. Beside him, Tsunami watched him work with interest. Obviously she didn't expect him to have any experience cooking. His appearance didn't support any image of him being a cook and not many males around have the ability to cook or thinking that cooking was 'manly'.

Harry could feel the stare he got from his host, but didn't say anything. It was so long since he was able to cook on his own and he hoped he still retained his ability to cook correctly. With the whole fiasco, he was too busy to think about cooking and when he was in his manor, it was the house elf who prepared his food. To tell the truth, he liked to cook. Sure it brought bad memory about being forced to cook for the Dursleys in his early age, but he grew to like it.

Harry cleaned the fishes he got in the lake during his training and sliced them into parts before putting them into a bowl of mixed spices and fried them in a frying pan beside the saucepan. He poured some soup into a cup and tasted it. He smiled and nodded, delighted to know the taste was correct. Looking at his host, he poured the soup into another cup and offered her. She took the cup with a smile. Obviously from her raised eyebrow she was surprised to know that it tasted good. She nodded and gave the cup back.

"It's good," she told him.

"Arigatou," with that he went back to his cooking. It has been 5 days after the genin team arrived and Harry started to put his legimency into good use. He now could hold very simple conversation with his hosts, though he didn't speak much with the shinobis or Tazuna, mostly with Tsunami and sometimes Inari thought it was difficult for him to follow what he was talking about what was with his fast speech and eagerness. Tazuna was still wary of him and so were the shinobis although the pink haired girl has softened more than others. The older shinobi didn't speak too much with him except for the occasional greetings they had. Sasuke was silent although he always felt the younger boy glancing at his back when he thought he wasn't looking. The seemingly loud mouthed boy seemed to be a bit more reserved and quieter when he was around, though he still looked energetic as always. And Harry still got the same strange vibes when he was around the blonde boy.

When Tsunami and Harry entered the dining room with the food, team 7 and the others were already there. The boys looked ravenous and tired, obviously from their training. They appeared to be almost drop dead on the floor. They perked up when they smelled the food though and at the same time their stomachs growled simultaneously. Tsunami laughed at their blushing faces. After she and Sakura helped Harry set up the table, they ate.

"Hey, this is good!" Naruto shouted as he shoved another spoonful of soup.

"Naruto, don't be so—" she didn't finish her statement as she watched her crush ate with the same fast pace.

"What's it, Sakura-chan?"

She sighed. "Nothing, forget it," she waved him off. The blond raised a confused eyebrow, but shrugged afterwards and went back to his food.

"Your cooking is as good as usual, Tsunami-san," the silver haired jounin complimented as he put back his empty plate.

The said woman giggled. "It wasn't me who cook all of these, Hatake-san. It's Harry-san who cooked the food tonight," Naruto's spoon stopped in front of his mouth. His eyes were wide in disbelief. The others' states weren't too different too.

Harry only smiled, knowing that she complimented him.

"Woah, you can cook?" Naruto asked disbelievingly. Harry only nodded. "You don't look like anyone who like to cook," he sized the dark haired wizard from head to toe.

"Naruto, don't be so rude like that!"

Harry shook his head. "It is okay, Haruno-san. I see that not many men here know to cook, I'm just er…what's the word?" Kakashi noted Harry said 'here', so he concluded that wherever he came from, it was usual to have a male cook.

"Special?" the jounin offered. The wizard nodded with slight hesitation, storing the new word to his vocabulary collection for later use.

The day ended with nothing interesting happened, well if you ignored the fact that the 2 genin boys puked out of their guts from eating so much in fast pace and that Inari yelled at them, only this time Naruto stuck a cord and the Wave boy ran crying. Harry eyed the silver haired jounin that followed Inari. The wizard went back to concentrate on his food, knowing that the jounin would help the young kid, beside it wasn't like he could help the boy much with his disability to speak their language fluently.

Naruto and Sasuke slept without even changing their garments as soon as their heads touched the pillows, showing how tired they were. Harry tucked their blankets before he wandered to the land of dream himself.

The next morning when he was awake, Harry met with Tsunami in the kitchen. He greeted her and said that he would be out for hours and he would eat lunch outside so she wouldn't need to prepare any for him.

"Will you be here for dinner?" she asked. The dark haired man nodded before he came back to his room and retrieved his sword. The 2 boys still slept soundly on their futons. When he closed the door, he didn't notice that Sasuke's eyes have opened. The onyx eyes stared at the door for a moment before he closed his eyes once again.

As usual Harry ran laps around the lake and practiced his swordsmanship and magic where no one was around. Channeling his magic into his blade and closing his eyes, Harry trained to synchronize his senses with the entity inside his sword. The sword glowed warmly and Harry received the images of things around him from the demon's mind. It was a whole new perspective for Harry. Right now he was seeing and feeling everything via the demon. He was like in the trance he had when the demon took hold on him in the battle only this time, the demon didn't control his body merely giving him information it had.

Harry was back in Tazuna's house when the lunchtime was over. He deposited his sword back to his room and took a refreshing bath before going out to the town for sightseeing and improving his speech. As usual there was not much to see except the poor condition of the town. Harry entered the food store Tsunami usually bought the food from, noting that there was more variety of food than usual and there was even 2 slabs of meat there. Picking them up, he bought them later along with other vegetables using his exchanged money. The dark haired young man walked to the bridge to see the villagers' progress on the bridge constructing.

The sight in front of him however, wasn't something he was expected to see. The workers were screaming 'Monsters!' and running away from the bridge. Harry stiffened and caught one of the workers. "What happened?" he asked.

"Y-you're Tazuna's guest, right?" the man didn't ask for confirmation as he continued. "T-There are monsters on the b-bridge! You should run too!" Harry cast legimency to the man, confused on his fast pace talking that was heard to him like a blubbering nonsense. He quickly found the information he needed and retrieved it.

Oh, shit!

It looked like Gatou's men were moving.

Harry ran to the bridge, ignoring the frightened shouts from the fisherman. He arrived at the bridge to find the genin team that has stayed with him in Tazuna's house, excluding Naruto was engaging the enemy. Harry raised an eyebrow when he saw many shinobis with the same face. Twin, he could understand. Quintuplet he could relate, but this…either their mom was really, really big in her pregnancy that she gave birth to more than 5 babies or…or…well he didn't know what to think about it. That was the only possible explanation.

Sasuke moved, too fast to be caught though Harry still could see him with his heightened sense even if it was a bit blurry. The young man was back in his spot when the whole squadron of twins exploded into water. Harry's mind supplied him a possible explanation. _Illusion._

Sasuke was fighting another shinobi. This time it was a shorter ninja with mask covered his face. The genin appeared to have the upper hand until his opponent did something with one of his hand, making some weird gestures and the water below the two rose to the air and formed hundreds of sharp ice shards.

"Holy hell…" was the only thing he could utter as he watched the scene flabbergasted.

The shards struck on the bridge surface completely missing their intended target as Sasuke leapt away. Harry fingered his wand, anxious as he thought whether he needed to help them or not. They already looked like they could handle them…

Boy…he knew that he would regret it later…

Haku was ready to activate his bloodline when he was struck behind as if something big hit him on his back. The supposed hunter-nin was blown 15 feet from his spot by the strength. He felt like the wind inside him was knocked out.

All of them in the bridge turned their heads to see a sheepish looking Harry holding a…stick? on his right hand, before he attempted to hide it behind his back. His cheek flushed. They turned to Haku who was trying to stand from the floor and then to the young man again in disbelief, wondering what he had done to the masked nin.

"Ah, hello, may I join this little chit chat?" Harry asked with a sheepish grin, fingers still playing nervously with the wand behind his back.

"Who're you?" Zabuza asked him carefully, his eyes strayed so often to his subordinate. 'I didn't know that the old man hired another ninja.'

"Uh, I do not think you can say it, but what the hell? My name is Harry Potter."

"Leave this place at once and I might spare you. This has nothing to do with you," said Zabuza, thinking that he was a mere traveler who decided to stick their but into something that wasn't their business.

Harry could only understand 'leave' and 'spare you', so with a quick probe to Zabuza's mind, he got what the ninja in front of him want him to. "No can do. I owe Tsunami-san and I decided to pay my debt."

"Then DIE!" Harry's eyes widened as he saw sharp projectiles were thrown to him.

'Fast!' Out of reflex, he took out his wand and made an invisible shield. The kunais bounced on contact with the shield. 'O man, thank God none of my hunters were this fast or I'd be a goner right then.' Harry reached his back only to widen his eyes when he remembered that he had stored his sword in Tazuna's house. 'Crap!' his mind supplied when Zabuza snapped out of his frozen mind and charged at him. Kakashi turned his head and dashed to the missing-nin, hoping that he wouldn't be too late. Questions about what just happened could be asked later.

Deciding that to hell with consequences, Harry shot a barrage of hexes. Only to have his opponent dodged it, even if it was only barely. Now Harry was in panic. 'Don't panic, you moron. You're a veteran, not an fucking amateur!' he chided himself. "Why don't you just be a good boy and stand still!" he grumbled, changing his tactic. He apparated soundlessly 5 meters behind Zabuza.

"Zabuza-san, BEHIND YOU!" Haku shouted.

At the same time Zabuza turned his head, Harry decided to finish the battle as quick as possible. "CRUCIO!" a jet of magic shot from the tip of his wand and hit Zabuza on his chest. A painful scream erupted from the missing-nin covered mouth.

Team 7, Tazuna, and Haku watched in disbelief to see the result of the beam of light.

Harry held his curse over him, not wanting to give him a chance to retaliate. "Avada ke—" he apparated out of danger as senbons darted to his way. The cruciatus curse gave away as he lost his concentration. Zabuza was trembling on the bridge floor.

"Zabuza-san!" the masked hunter-nin crouched on the floor and looked at his out-of-breath master anxiously.

Zabuza tried to stand up by himself. "I…I'm alright," he breathed deeply. His eyes focused on his opponent, mind still reeling from the pain he just received. It was like his body was burned alive and thousands of needles punctured his body. The former Mist-nin wondered just what the young man in front of him did to him. It wasn't like everything he had experienced before.

"What did you do to me?" he demanded.

Harry quirked an eyebrow. "Why should I tell you?"

"I'LL KILL YOU!" Haku screamed angrily as he dashed to him.

"Who knows that apparation will play a big role in fighting these people?' the wizard popped up from another spot. 'Okay, from what I got, the best way to handle these people is…' he conjured 10 rocks and transfigured them into 10 big wolves. "Go!" the black wolves growled before darting toward the younger man.

'WHAT THE HELL?' all of them chorused inside their minds.

One of the wolves leapt into the still stunned Haku.

"HAKU!" Zabuza's shout snapped him out of his thought, but the smallest wolf already bit his left arm and tore his flesh.

"ARGH!" he threw a senbon from hid right hand to the spot between its eyes. The wolf let him go as it yelped and sprawled to the ground, lifeless. Haku quickly jumped as soon as its jaw released his arm, which was a good thing because the other wolves leapt into him. They landed on the spot where he was no more than a second ago and growled angrily. A rain of senbons came upon the wild animals. One by one, the wolves dropped to the floor. The last to drop was the biggest one. Its glassy golden eyes stared at the sky before it lay unmoving.

Harry scratched his head. 'Okay, next time made an inanimate object instead of animals…' the dark haired wizard prepared to make a stone golem when he noticed his surrounding was starting to be covered by mist. He couldn't see anything. The thick mist covered the whole bridge. 'What the hell? Where did all of this fog come from? Judging from the weather, there shouldn't be any mist much less as thick as this that I can't even see my hand.'

"Katon: Goukakyuu no jutsu," Sasuke's voice cut off the silence. The young wizard saw numerous reddish orange lights from his spot.

"Hijutsu: Makyou Hyoushou," he heard Haku's voice from Sasuke's direction. A minute later he heard Naruto's shout.

It seemed all of team 7 were back to the stage.

Harry took 3 steps when he felt a movement behind his back. He quickly ducked and rolled to his right. "Che, you're lucky," a silhouette of Zabuza said.

"How did you find me?" Harry asked carefully, ready to apparate in any second.

"Your footsteps. I could hear them," Padfoot's godson's eyes widened.

'He could hear my footsteps? I thought my footsteps are muffled already.' Four more silhouettes surrounded him. Harry almost apparated out when the nearest silhouette moved with incredible speed.

"Oh, no you don't. I won't let you do you fancy teleportation trick this time!" the blade swung.

Harry's eyes widened. Memories of his life flashed before his eyes.

The good ones. Harry saw hogwarts the first time from the boat. He won his first Quidditch game. Remus and Sirius joked with him in Grimmauld Place. He, Ron, and Hermione watched the sunset together. He watched as Ron and Hermione quarreled because of grades. He and his male Gryffindors friends drank Fire Whiskey for the first time in their graduation day. His time with Keinne, an old blacksmith dwarf. Zeus glowed comfortingly on his hand as he gazed at the battlefield below them.

The thrilling ones. He and his friends passed the obstacles to Philospoher's Stone. He killed the basilisk in his 2nd year. Chased by dementors in his quidditch match. The Triwizard Championship. The battle in Department of Mysteries. His adventure to the cave with Dumbledore to acquire one of Voldemort's horcruxes on his 6th year. His journey to find the rest of the horcruxes. He dodged the muggles', Voldemort's, and Ministry of Magic's search parties. His battle with the dark creatures with Zeus on his side. His last battle with Voldemort.

The bad ones. He was abused by the Dursleys. Cedric's death. Sirius' shocked expression when he was thrown to the veil. Hearing the prophecy. Dumbledore's death by Snape's hand. The Weasleys' deaths. Remus' last moment as he smiled sadly at Harry with a silver knife stuck on his chest. Hermione gave him a kiss on his lips as she caressed his cheek weakly on his lap, telling him that she loved him. Harry's clothes and face were covered by Hermione's blood, eyes seeing nothing as he hugged his best friend who had kept her feeling of him for so long, died on his lap (AN: yes, I'm a HarryHermione fan incase you don't know). Ron smiled at Harry's petrified body sadly, saying that it would be okay and he should stay there. Harry shouted at Ron with tears springing from his emerald eyes, pleading him not to go and got himself killed in the process. Ron's last word as he closed the door.

**Flashback**

"Live Harry! You must live for your parents, for Cedric, for Sirius, for Dumbledore, for Ginny, for Fred and George, for my mum and dad, for Bill and Charlie, for Remus and Neville, for…" Ron choked. "For Hermione…and for me," Ron stared at his eyes. "Goodbye, Harry. We will watch you."

"RON! NO!" Harry tried to break open Ron's spell to no avail. Ron had incorporated his spell with the knowledge of Egyptian magic he got from his oldest brother. He needed time to break the enchantment. Time that he didn't have as he watched his friend walked to his death.

Harry could hear Ron's voice from behind the door. "Live Harry. You must live for our parts too and kick Voldie's ass while you're at it, don't you."

**End Flashback**

Harry's emerald eyes snapped open as it glowed brightly. "I.Won't. DIE!" his magic fluctuated and he glowed brightly. Wind picked up from his surrounding and the bridge shook as his power affected his surrounding. Zabuza was thrown by the power, his sword was blown up and it landed on the ground with a resounding clang.

The Wave citizens watched with tremor and morbid fascination at the bridge direction when they saw a jet of light erupted to the sky from the ground. They had felt the earth shook and their skin crawled when a wave of power reached them.

When the light died out, they released their breaths they didn't know they held.

TBC…

R.E.V.I.E.W!

Heh, a cliffhanger, don't you just hate me? He…3x.

And about Hermione if you want to know…no, she wasn't Harry's girlfriend. Actually Harry only knew about her feeling in her last moment. I have thought of this last moment just for fun and the result I was teary eyed.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Harry Potter isn't mine and so is Naruto. Unfortunately, isn't it, guys?

Author's Note: I have just moved in. Damn, my legs and hands are still sore.

"…" Japanese talking

"…" English talking

Italic means remembrance

Chapter Five

The moment Naruto's brain registered his rival's death by Zabuza's subordinate, his mind went blank. He could only feel hate to his opponent for killing Sasuke, anger for himself because of his own inability to avoid the senbons that led to his death, sadness to see someone died for him, and betrayal for being left alone by his rival.

Naruto felt hot all of sudden, particularly on his belly. He closed his eyes and screamed, feeling all emotions rolled into one and the feel of power coming through his navel.

Naruto decided to let it all go

His whisker marks became thicker. His hands trembled as the nails turned longer and sharper. His hands were changed into claws.

Being rid of his human instinct right now didn't make Naruto oblivious to the fact that he felt a surge of power nearby coming out from another. There was something familiar about this power. It felt like…something…and yet so different at the same time.

Who? His drifting mind half opened its eyes.

That Potter Harry, his mind supplied before its eyes closed and once again became unaware of its surrounding. Naruto turned completely feral. The young genin opened his mouth in silent scream as his teeth grew into fang-like teeth. When Naruto opened his eyes, it was slitted, like a cat pupil. Blood red eyes stared at the stunned enemy.

Unlike the young shinobi, Harry released all of his power to his surrounding while Naruto's power still revolved around him. The jet of light surrounded the older man, tearing through the thick mist around and blasted to the open sky. The mist was blown away by the combination of two power surges and the wind that was built up around Harry.

He could hear a girl's and an old man's loud gasps as they saw both Naruto and Harry. They didn't see Sasuke's body laid on the ground as their eyes completely transfixed on both of them.

Naruto's eyes turned to the other source of power and they narrowed as it locked into a pair of glowing green eyes before they drifted back to the masked man. There was something much ore important to do.

ENEMY!

KILL!

REVENGE!

TAKE HIS BLOOD!

TORE HIS LIMBS!

Naruto roared and dashed, claws ready to rip apart the nin in front of him.

0-0 0-0 0-0

_Death is just a new experience, Harry. It's a beginning, not an end._

I have thought of you as my own son. Please don't let our deaths affect you so much that you barely able to act like you once were. 

_Fred has died, and so will I. we've finished our jobs here, but you haven't. Maybe we'll meet you again on the other side. I have a feeling this will be my last battle. Farewell, Harrikins._

Make me, Sirius, and your parents proud, Harry! I love you, Harry! 

_I made it, Harry. I killed that bitch. Now it's your turn to kill Voldemort for once and all! _

_I wonder if I will be able to see my mom in the other side. It's not your time yet, Harry._

_Live Harry, for all of us!_

Dumbledore's voice, Mrs. Weasley's, George's, Remus', Hermione's, Neville's, Luna's, Ron's…their voices replayed on his mind. Harry was unaware as a bluish white glow surrounded his body, crackling like a lightning. His body felt hot. His breath ragged.

_You're still young, Potter. They died, yes, but that doesn't mean you can just throw away your life like this. They had fought for peace and died for it. Will you just leave it like this? Will you just let Voldemort trample both wizarding and muggle world? Will you just throw away the peace they fought for? You're not a kid anymore. Stand up! Make them proud of you and live your life the fullest! They're still watching us up there. Will you disappoint them? Will you make their deaths going to waste like this?_

Mad Eyes' question rang on his mind.

"I.WILL.NOT!" Harry's eyes snapped open, revealing the striking glowing green eyes. The iris was changed. There were silver strings around the slitted iris. Cat like eyes stared angrily at his frozen opponent. The bolts of lightning around him formed a beam of light that tore through the mist around him. The wind that picked up around him blew the mist away like a wave.

He felt another power surge behind him. There was something similar with Zeus' power and yet there was something remarkably different too. His eyes turned and they locked into a pair of slitted red eyes. There was a moment of silence as they gazed each other. They turned around at the same time, both of them acknowledging that they weren't enemies.

For now, at least.

Harry barely remembered that the owner of the red eyes was Naruto. His mind was too clouded. His instinct to kill his enemy screamed, demanding Zabuza's blood to be spilled.

HOW DARE HE!

HOW DARE HE TRIED TO KILL HIM!

HE WILL LIVE!

HE WILL SURVIVE!

Just like they'd like to. Like their requests! He had promised them. And there would be no way this…MORTAL denied him of it!

Harry's more compassionate side was shoved inside. His dark side claimed his mind. And it demanded the mortal's death, just like those deaths he caused to Death Eaters and their families years ago. Harry barely felt it when his fangs became more pointed like vampire's fangs, when his nails turned sharper, when a black symbol appeared on his left cheek, or when his lightning bolt scar throbbed hotly.

Bluish white lightning crackled and gathered in front of him forming a ball of bolts that looked similar like Kakashi's original jutsu, Raikiri (or Chidori). In a second the ball stretched and formed something else resembling a long sword. When the light dispersed, it revealed Harry's blade that was supposed to be in Tazuna's house, crackling with electric. It hovered in the air, as if some invisible string wrapped around it and placed it there. The red stone in the center glowed and throbbed like a heartbeat.

Harry's mind didn't register the event as shocking, even if his sword never did this before. Although probably it was because he never let his sword out of his sight before. The young man didn't care. His mind was completely focused on killing the bandaged man in front of him. The sword was only a means to achieve that.

Harry grabbed the handle of the hovering sword. In unison, his scar, his heart and the central stone throbbed, as he bonded with Zeus. The blade hummed with power. Harry never realized that a silhouette of a pair of bat-like black wings erupted behind his back. He didn't care about Naruto who went berserk just like him, nor Kakashi who watched agape at both displays of power, nor Sakura and Tazuna who watched in disbelief and terror at the scene unfolded before their eyes.

Harry roared and brought Zeus (AN: I'm wondering whether I should change Zeus into Thor? It sounds better) down to the ground. A charge of electrical current crept through the bridge floor toward a wide-eyed Zabuza. The missing-nin quickly swept his sword from the ground and jumped as high as he could to avoid the lightning wave. When he landed, he could see the lightning trace on the floor. Zabuza was reminded by one of The Seven Swordsmen's sword ability that could also control lightning.

He looked at the end of the trace, but couldn't find his opponent. Panicking, Zabuza focused on his hearing. He heard a muffled footstep 10 meters from his right. When he opened his eyes he was surprised to see the black haired man was in front of him with his sword brought down toward him.

'Fast!' It was only because of his fast reflex Zabuza was fast enough to block the sword from slashing his body.

His sword was being pushed back by Harry's sword. Zabuza gritted his teeth, wondering where the smaller and thinner man got this strength. Looking at his face, Zabuza didn't see any trace of fatigue or weariness, only a blank mask. The ex Swordsman of Mist deflected the double-edged sword, but his opponent didn't give him time to breath. He was back to defend himself from the barrage of thrusts, slashes, and swings. And his opponent didn't stay in one spot either. One second he could be in front of him, the next second he was already on his back. Zabuza was hard pressed to defend himself. His sword fighting style was unfamiliar too. It seemed like acrobatic combined with strength, agility, and a fighting style that was supposed to be reserved only for shorter and lighter sword. Zabuza blocked another downward slash, only this time he was surprised when the younger man twisted his body and kicked him from his left.

THAT was unexpected. Normally a swordsman never used anything other than his own sword. Well the man in front of him obviously wasn't normal. Not by a long shot. Unless you ignored the symbol that somehow appeared on his left cheek, his hands turned claws, his fangs, the shadowy wings behind his back and his glowing cat-like eyes. And it was _really_ hard to ignore those things.

Zabuza rolled to his left. His opponent's sword was imbedded on the spot where he was a second ago. He was surprised to see him let his sword go. For a swordsman to let go of his sword, he must be very confident that he would win the fight.

A second later claw-like hand crushed his face. His body went poof, replaced by a crushed log. His opponent seemed surprised by the act. Zabuza used this opportunity to kill him when he was surprised and unarmed.

A clanging sound rang on the bridge. Zabuza's opponent's glowing eyes went past the sword on his right claw-like hand and stared at his own eyes. The missing-nin whipped his eyes to the spot 15 meters from them where the sword was previously, only to notice it gone.

Did this guy somehow have an invisible connection with his sword or something?

His opponent glowered angrily, showing a bit of his fang-like teeth, before he punched him on his face. Caught off guard, Zabuza didn't have time to defend himself properly from the next strike. He was thrown back to the ground, while his sword swung in the air and plunged into the water below them. Zabuza was practically defenseless right now.

He saw his opponent charged to what seemed would be his death soon. A flash of a feminine boy he had saved years ago and came to see as his own child flew on his mind.

0-0 0-0 0-0

Harry yelled, hands still clutching Zeus as his sword went to pierce the now defenseless Zabuza on the ground. His mind was blank and he recalled another memory of Mad Eye.

_Is this what you're reduce to, Potter? An emotionless assassin, born to slaughter all of them without mercy? I have seen Voldemort's demon side, kid. And I have to say, yours is even much more terrifying than his. You're not making them proud with this. They will be sad and disappointed to see you turn into this kind of monster that has no mercy at all. I agree to kill them. But to this point? You're not living, Potter. You're merely surviving._

_This is the sword that you have made on your own, lad. This sword will serve you well and so will the demon inside it. But remember that you've to be careful with it. Even if the demon obeys you, its dark power can still corrupt you, especially if you're driven by your blind revenge. The dark power of the sword will heighten your emotion, be it negative or positif. You're a strong lad, and I don't think you'll be corrupted, but it's only a warning. Don't let it control your emotion, lad. Because when you let it loose… there is no turning back. You'll just be a heartless monster bending for destruction. This is my last lesson to you…Harry. You are a good student and it was nice to teach you. _Keinne's voice told him.

Harry's swords tip stopped right in front of Zabuza's throat, only a mere inch from tearing it. His eyes reverted back to their normal form, although still glowing. His nails shrunk and dulled. The dark shadow wings vanished into nothingness and the symbol on his left cheek faded. Harry breathed raggedly, his heart was beating hard as if he was running marathon. When he opened his mouth to breath, if one still bothered to see it, he/she will know that he still had his sharp fangs.

"Why did you stop?" asked Zabuza calmly, as if he accepted his soon-to-be-death.

"Why did you ask? Don't you want to live? Why question me?" Harry replied.

"Just being curious, I guess. Isn't it your job to finish me off?"

"I want to protect this country's hope, but that doesn't mean I have to kill you, does it?"

The missing-nin snorted. "If you let me go, I'll be back to finish my job here. And then you'll be forced to defend this bridge again. Why not kill me to stop this for once and all?"

"Is that what you wish? Your death?" Harry stared at Zabuza. The man stayed silent. Harry didn't understand why he wanted to die, but Zabuza's eyes revealed his acceptance. "Very well. I'll respect your wish," Harry readied himself to kill the older man who had stood up and stayed still on his spot, unarmed.

"…It's nice to meet a swordsman as good as you," was the last words Zabuza uttered before he prepared to be killed. Harry rammed his sword.

Droplets of blood dropped to the bridge floor. Harry watched wide-eyed with blood-covered face at a blood-coughing Haku whose left chest was rammed by his lightning blade. Behind him, a pained-looking Zabuza grabbed the tip of his sword that went through Haku's chest into Zabuza's ribs.

"Fuck!" was the only thing Harry could say, as he pulled his sword from both men. Haku dropped to the ground, but was caught by Zabuza.

"Ha-Ku," the missing-nin coughed blood, but he didn't seem care with his condition, just the feminine teen. Harry stared at Zabuza's concerned eyes, realizing that it was because of the kid Zabuza accepted his death, however strange it might sound, because wasn't he supposed to stay alive to make the young man happy?

"Za-buza-san," Haku's hand grabbed his once saviour's hand. "I'm happy that you're alright," he coughed again.

Harry wondered how Haku could miss the blood from Zabuza's wound even if it wasn't as fatal as his, but understood why when he saw the unfocused eyes of the younger boy.

The young man's eyes slowly closed, he could no longer hear Zabuza's shouts. The young wizard could see that he wasn't dead yet, but would if he didn't get heavy treatment soon.

"Move!" Harry took Haku from Zabuza, ignoring the angry shout coming from him. "Shut up! Let me heal! He not died yet. I manage to change my sword's course from ramming his vital point when he surprised me, showing up out of nowhere," Harry frantically searching for his wand. When he couldn't find it, he concentrated to summon it. The wand flew to his out stretched hand. "Okay…what's the spell to heal an internal wound like this?" he scrambled his brain trying to find the right spell from his extensive arsenal of spells.

Harry was forced to learn healing spells when he had to go into hiding. With him alone while the ones who hunted him outnumber him, Harry had to heal himself without anyone else's help. Afterall even with his demon sword he was still bound to be wounded, not to mention when he hasn't made his sword yet and therefore could be killed easily. Thanks to his family's extensive library on Potter Castle, Harry managed to learn some quite useful healing spells. He wouldn't be able to master these spells, if it wasn't for the dire necessity. At that time Harry had to put his dueling training aside to learn the spells. It frustrated him to no end when he couldn't master the advanced ones that Harry thought that perhaps it was better to learn healing potions rather than healing spells. But Harry didn't give up, and for the result after 2 months full of healing spell training with only 5 hours a day to sleep, eat, and relax, and another hour to do his usual exercise so he wouldn't loose his edge. Harry had been able to master them.

The problem was…right now he wasn't healing himself, but rather someone else and even if he had practiced this advanced spell for internal wound, didn't mean he ever used it. He didn't know if he had confidence to do it right. The first experiments to himself rather than a dummy were rather…blotchy and that was when he used a less advanced healing spell. He had to thank God that he had his elves to help him or he would die before he could fight Voldemort. Not to mention that right now he was so nervous like hell. Unconfident plus nervous…not exactly a good combination when you had to heal someone.

Ginny's voice told him that as a mediwitch she had to be sure that she would be able to heal her patient or there would be dire consequences. The magic afterall was being controlled by the caster and if the caster thought bad things would happen…well, let's just say that it would happen. Harry didn't know whether her advice would help him or perhaps made him even more nervous.

'God, please let it be a success,' Harry prayed inwardly as he focused on the wound. Harry cast a time bubble spell around him and Haku. With this spell, the time inside the bubble would be slowed down considerably so Harry would have more time to heal Haku. The young wizard bit his bottom lip as the tip of his wand shone softly. In his mind Harry was imagining how the bleeding would stop and the internal wound knitted back. Sweats formed on his forehead as his eyes narrowed in concentration.

Tazuna and Team 7, including Sasuke who had come back to the living world were standing not too far and yet also not too close either from Harry. They were still wary of Zabuza and Haku although they were wounded. Kakashi was looking at Harry in interest. What he did was different from what medic-nin's healing method. The silver haired jounin couldn't feel any chakra was used in the healing process. Judging from the wound, he could see that Harry's sword didn't pierce through his vital point although it was close, _really_ close. Just an inch further to its left and the kid would die instantly from having his heart stabbed.

Kakashi eyed Zabuza who had given up from entering the weird bubble that somehow Harry had conjured out of nowhere. The man pounded on it for 5 minutes until he stopped after he saw that Harry was actually trying to heal his subordinate, not killing him. With his quite heavy wound on his body, the man wouldn't be much of a problem anymore. Beside it didn't seem like he wanted to fight them any longer. He should have treated his wound though. Even if he wouldn't die from it, it still would be a quite serious wound if it was left alone unattended.

Kakashi eyed a tired looking Sasuke who was being fussed over by Sakura from the corner of his eyes. If that kid intended on killing him, Sasuke would be dead right now. Thankfully, Zabuza's right hand wasn't looking to kill him. The problem was Kakashi didn't do anything on this combat, only watching it from sidelines. Never once did he try to help his students while Harry was facing Zabuza alone. Kakashi had wanted to see what the younger man was capable of to uncover his secret. Heck, he even exposed his now covered sharingan to watch the battle.

The result?

An almost blotched up mission. A possible death of a member of his first genin team, the last Uchiha who still attached to Konoha. A possible seal breaking of Kyuubi…Kakashi shuddered to think it happen. The repercussions were too high.

Kakashi's eyes turned to a wary Sakura and Tazuna. They still kept throwing weird looks toward Naruto. Not that he could blame them after they saw the genin's transformation and the chakra around him. It still sent him shivers when he thought of it. The blonde genin didn't seem to notice it though. He was too relieved that his fri-er-comrade didn't actually die.

Other than that…it was an interesting event. Kakashi stared at Harry who kept trying to heal Haku's injuries. The young man's transformation…was he someone like Naruto? Was a demon sealed inside him too? It didn't explain why the man didn't seem to understand the concept of chakra though (Kakashi concluded it from watching a gaping Harry who looked at tree walking training in disbelief), or why he seemed so lost and couldn't speak Japanese. What was that stick? What could it do? What did his strange-looking sword have to do with all of this? What were those shadowy wings? How could he heal Zabuza's right man without chakra? There were many Whys, Whats, and Hows still remained unanswered. And the jounin doubted that they would be answered soon.

The man was truly an enigma.

The son of Konoha's White Fang watched in wonder as the bubble exploded in thousands of sparks soundlessly. The young wizard sat on the floor, sighing in relief. Kakashi could see Haku's chest rising and dropping, indicating that he was alive, and judging by Harry's look, saved from death.

He saw Harry offered to heal Zabuza too before they got into argument.

"Listen, I know not what is about your strange logic you think he'll be good with no you," he could hear that Harry was still stumbling with words. To think that just days ago, the boy barely knew 10 words, it was amazing to see him talk like that. This guy must be genius to learn Japanese until this level in just few days. "You see? He takes sword for you. You die, he won't live too and maybe kill himself after that. That is what you want?" He gazed sternly at the missing-nin. "You understand I need to heal you for he too? And for God's sake, stop interrupt me! It not like I know what you talk about. You damn too fast!" Harry swore.

Kakashi wondered where did he pick up those swearing words from.

"So, you still lost from them? How pathetic!" a man said behind them.

"Gatou!" Tazuna shouted angrily at the grinning short man. Behind him were his cronies.

"It doesn't matter. I have planned to kill you without paying you afterall," the crime lord looked pointedly toward Zabuza, ignoring angry Tazuna who was held back by Sakura. "Kill them," he gestured to his men.

Kakashi scratched his head. "Well…it seems like I'll have a role afterall," but before he could move a bow landed a meter from the advancing cronies. The cavalry has arrived. On the front, Inari was armed by a crossbow with the town men behind him, holding anything they could use as weapon.

"We will protect this town from you! We're not afraid anymore!" the young kid shouted, his voice trembled a little but he stayed on his ground. Kakashi saw Naruto was smiling proudly at Tazuna's grandson.

The cronies were hesitant to move after they saw they were outnumbered. "What are you doing? They're only civilian! They won't be able to handle you!"

"They are indeed are civilians, but I'm not," Kakashi moved forward and revealed his sharingan, scaring them. He added the scare by making 10 shadow clones. Some of the cronies ran in fear, followed by their friends who were sour to see they were left. Seeing his men escaped, Gatou's resolve was broken down and he too ran away, but Kakashi didn't let the crime lord get away. He caught him and some of his men, letting the rest escaped. The town people cheered loudly, happy that Gatou's reign was finally brought down.

The Copy-nin eyed Harry who had finished healing Zabuza. Sandaime would like to know about him. That much he was sure of.

TBC…

Fiuh, the battle is ended! Thank God!

Haku Vs Sasuke and Naruto scene is the same with the canon. The only thing I change is Zabuza's battle with Kakashi, changing it into Harry Vs. Zabuza and Tazuna and Sakura see Naruto's transformation.

Don't forget to leave your review!


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: Just forget about it, guys!

Author's Note: I have just watched Full Metal Alchemist The Movie and I have to say it's pretty good. I will go back to my hometown this evening, so there is a possibility I won't update anything until I'm back here again. That's why I force myself to write this chapter and send it only 2 days after I sent previous chapter. Hope you'll like it, though you'll probably think it is a bit boring (there are some humors though).

Chapter Six

It has been 2 days since Gatou was brought down and the town people still rejoiced over it. In one particular house which was owned by the bridge builder, Tazuna, a certain someone woke up from his slumber. The man winced as he stretched his sore muscles. He rubbed his eyes and lifted his body from the bed reluctantly, careful not to awaken the 2 younger boys slept on the futons in the floor. He gave out a yawn before he grabbed his clothes and headed to the bathroom. After taking 10 minutes bath the man entered the kitchen and found his host was cooking.

"Good morning, Tsunami-san," the man greeted the black haired woman, as he took a glass of water.

"Good morning, Harry-san. Rough morning?" she smiled.

"Not really. I'm still sore, but that's it. Thanks for the medicine," he thanked her.

"You're welcome. You really should have taken care of your body. You don't want to faint again like yesterday, do you?" she scolded.

Harry chuckled guiltily. "Yes, I think I should." His host thought that he fainted because he was over trained. The truth wasn't that, but Harry didn't think she needed to know the truth.

The truth was his body was broken down after being possessed by his own sword. Usually he wouldn't feel so strained like this. Afterall he was used to be possessed by his sword for longer time and the after effect wasn't as hard as yesterday. Problem was his sword has never channeled that much power on his body and never controlled it to the point he got physical changes before and it was quite taxing on his body.

To tell the truth he didn't expect to faint yesterday. Afterall 2 days ago after he healed Haku and Zabuza he didn't feel any kind of fatigue. When he woke up yesterday he did feel sore muscles but that was expected after having possessed by his demonic sword. He was embarrassed to remember how he just fainted in front of the others in the kitchen. When he opened his eyes, Tsunami told him that he was knocked out for 5 hours and his muscles screamed for rest. He could still remember the weird look Kakashi sent him when he said that he was experiencing what people called overload syndrome. Harry just nodded, not giving any explanation to them.

Harry thought it was an improvement that he wasn't knocked out and bedridden for 3 days just like his first possession. He was lucky that his elves managed to bring him back to Potter Castle to be taken care of before the Ministry or Death Eaters find him.

Harry smiled and thanked Tsunami when he gave him a plate of warm soup, telling him, it would be good for his body. When he was finished he helped her to make breakfast.

An hour later, Tazuna entered the kitchen with a smile as he greeted both of them. Tazuna eyed Harry carefully when Harry told them he would go to train in the woods. "You're not going to faint again, are you?"

"Nah, I'll be okay. I promise I won't overwork myself," the black haired lad told him before he exited the house. The old man shook his head. He ate the food his daughter served him slowly. A frown marred his face when he remembered the event that took in the unfinished bridge 2 days ago. Who or what exactly was the man that stayed on his house? This question could also be directed to a member of the genin team he had hired. He had asked the jounin about it. And the younger man told him that in shinobi society there were some clans that had the ability to turn…feral like that. He told him that perhaps Naruto and Harry were part of those clans. Tazuna felt like there was something the jounin didn't told him, but he didn't dare to ask. The old man thought whether Harry's health was affected by his ability to turn feral, afterall the man had fainted suddenly. But if it was, why didn't Naruto feel it too? The blonde kid still seemed lively and energetic as usual.

"Father?" Tazuna looked up startled and found himself staring at his frowning daughter.

"Yes?" Is there something wrong? You just staring at your food?" Is it not good?" she asked worriedly.

"Oh the food is okay and there is nothing wrong. I just hope that we can finish the bridge faster," he lied.

"…Okay then," she exited the kitchen to clean the yard. Tazuna sighed. He shouldn't think of that anymore. As long as Harry or Naruto didn't think to destroy them like Gatou, it wasn't his problem. Afterall a secret clan ability was just that…a secret.

**In Konoha**

Sandaime was readying himself to go to Hokage Tower when a nin-dog with Konoha hitae-ate wrapped around its neck barked loudly. The old man quickly realized that it was one of Kakashi's fastest messenger dog. Biting his lip, the third Hokage took the scroll attached to its neck with dread, worried if there was something wrong happened on the mission. The nin-dog vanished in a poof after he took the scroll.

He opened the scroll carefully and read it. He was relieved to know that the mission was a success and the team members were all alive if wounded. He frowned when Kakashi wrote about Zabuza, the A-rank missing-nin and that the mission should be at least a B-rank mission and not C-rank. His eyes narrowed as he read the report further.

"Jiji?" Sarutobi was startled when his grandson called him. He quickly rolled the scroll. "Is there something wrong?"

"Nothing wrong, Konohamaru," his grandson looked at him doubtfully, telling him that he didn't buy it. Sandaime sighed. "It's only a report from Kakashi, one of our jounins."

"Kakashi?" the brunnete shouted in surprise. "Wasn't he Naruto-niisan's jounin instructor? What happened? Is Naruto-niisan okay?" he bombarded him with questions.

Damn! He shouldn't let out Kakashi's name!

"Naruto is okay and so is his team. Go back to your room, Konohamaru."

"Eh, but—"

"Konohamaru, not now!" the kid sulked and ran to his room. Sandaime wondered whether he needed to console his grandson, but decided against it.

The Konoha citizens were whispering amongst themselves when they saw their usual kind and smiling Hokage was subdued as he headed to his office. They wondered if something bad happened.

**Back to Wave Country**

Harry was doing his usual exercise when he saw Zabuza's subordinate was walking down toward him with a basket on his arm. The young wizard stopped running.

"Haku-san?" the younger man smiled kindly and bowed respectfully.

"Good morning, Harry-san. Are you okay? I heard you just fainted yesterday," Harry felt his cheek became hot and flushed.

Did everyone know about him fainted?

"I'm just too exhausted. It's nothing, really. You should think of yourself. You have just healed from grievous wound," that I inflicted, Harry added mentally. "And you shouldn't up from bed when you should've rest."

"I'm okay. I want to thank you for healing me and Zabuza-san. I'm forever in your debt," he bowed.

To think that this man 2 days ago wanted him dead for crucio-ing Zabuza…Harry was tempted to legimency Haku to see whether his feeling was true or it was only a mere pleasantry, but decided against it.

"Not really. I'm the one who give you the wounds in the first place afterall," Haku only shook his head, telling him that it wasn't his fault. Harry eyes the wooden basket on his arm. "Going somewhere?"

"Yes, I'm going to pick up some plants from a herb field nearby."

"There is a herb field here?" Harry asked curiously. He didn't know much about muggle plants and so he didn't know their functions. As far as he knew, the plants and animals in this world were similar with his world.

"There is," Haku noticed his interest. "Do you want to join me?"

"Sure," Harry was hopeful to learn more about the healing attributes of these herbs. He felt that it would be a necessary knowledge to learn in a world as violent like this one. With no magical plants around him anymore, he couldn't make any healing potions or other useful potions, so it was best to learn about these herbs. The younger man seemed to know much about healings.

**Tazuna's House an hour later**

Naruto yawned widely and rubbed his sleepy eyes. His head was leaning on the table for support. He watched Tsunami put the foods on the table and put his food in front of him, smiling amusedly at the sleepy teenager.

Naruto brightened suddenly and grabbed his bowl of food. "Itadakimasu!" he shouted before he practically gobbled his food. His female teammate didn't say anything since she was still too sleepy to scold him. She just didn't want to waste her energy to shout at him when she could do something more productive…like trying to get her Sasuke-kun to date her.

"Khaahh, I'm full!" the fox-boy patted his belly in satisfaction. Sasuke snorted mockingly. "Teme! What's your problem?"

"Naruto, don't be so rude to Sasuke-kun!"

"Yeah, right. As if," the blond grumbled. Sasuke gave him a smirk, but it turned into a scowl when their jounin sensei hit them on the head with his orange book.

"Now, now, children, don't start fighting in the morning," the three grumbled as they rubbed their foreheads. "When you're finished with your breakfast, I'll train you," the boys looked up, eager to train although in Sasuke's case, it was more hidden, both stopped on their tracks when they saw Kakashi's strange gleam though. The jounin seemed to be…awfully happy to train them unlike usual.

'Crap,' they simultaneously thought.

**In Hokage Tower**

Sarutobi read the letter he intended to send to Jiraiya and nodded in approval. If it didn't make his student running here like headless chicken, he didn't know what could.

_Ungrateful student, _

_Jiraiya, I've just gotten a report regarding another possible jinchuuriki. Come here ASAP! If you still don't get my message, it means: Get your sorry ass here soon or I'll blow it up to the moon when I meet you again (and you'll be sure as hell I'll ask the ANBU to hunt down your location! Do you understand! Or do I have to spell it out for you? It means no woman-peeking, no dally dallying, no sake-drinking, and no gambling! Failure to comply will make you get thrown out of every city in the continent (which means no bathhouse anymore, dear student, which leads to NO RESEARCH!) before you can utter one-single word. I repeat: DO YOU UNDERSTAND! And you know as hell I have the power to make your personal hell on earth true._

_Your impatient sensei_

The Third was tempted to add a small P.S. that he'd like to have the next Icha Icha Paradise book, but decided against it. There was no sense giving his student ammunition against his order and/or blackmail. Sarutobi rolled the scroll and stamped a special stamp he hadn't use for a decade: a monkey wearing Hokage's robe with nyoibo staff on its hand destroying everything around it with fire came out of its mouth full of sharp fangs. It was a special stamp he made specifically for his equally 3 special pupils to indicate that he was pissed off and they better read his message or the consequences would be dire indeed. And as far as he knew, no one, not even Orochimaru dared to defy it.

Sandaime reread Kakashi's report after he told his fastest messenger bird to send the letter to Jiraiya and grimaced. That Naruto, he had just sent him outside Konoha and looked what he'd gotten him. The old man felt his headache worsening.

An image of a pair of black bat-like wings? Symbol on his left cheek? Glowing slitted green eyes. Claws? He didn't know that there was a bat bijuu. And what was a bat demon doing with claws anyway? It wasn't like it was a feline or canine demon. Beside if it was truly a bat demon, its wings should be attached to its vessel's hands, not in the back. Or perhaps this man wasn't a demon vessel but merely from a clan that had weird ability. But how come he didn't understand the native language? And it seemed like he was a genius if Kakashi's report was right. Capable of speaking after only a few weeks?

The only explanation he could come up was that the man was washed away to wave's shore from another continent or island whose people spoke different language.

Another strange point about that man was that he didn't seem to understand the concept of chakra. And Kakashi said he didn't feel the man use any chakra at all with his technique.

Sandaime rubbed his forehead tiredly.

He should've retired years ago from hokage's position. But he couldn't do that. Not until Naruto could at least take care of himself. He was worried if his replacement would kill Naruto and he wouldn't be able to do anything because he was no longer Konoha's leader.

That much he owed it to Arashi. The man wouldn't forgive him if something happened to his son that was done by the very village he sacrificed his live and perhaps his son's for.

"You and your son are the same, Arashi. You all kept giving me headache, intentionally or not," Dead or Alive, Sandaime added mentally and sighed. "Jiraiya, this is your fault! I should've dumped Naruto on you! See if you like it, having headache like me!" the old man groaned dejectedly.

In a city hundred miles from Konoha, a giggling white haired man sneezed loudly causing the women in the bathhouse he was currently peeking on shrieked and ran away from the onsen to the safety of the changing room. Jiraiya swore loudly as he was chased by a horde of angry women with full clothes on after they exited the changing room.

**Tazuna's house**

Harry was speaking with Tsunami when team 7 entered the house. The three genins were bruised and their clothes were torn. All of them groaned tiredly. Behind him a happy Kakashi was smiling satisfied. With Gatou no longer a problem, the ninjas weren't needed to guard the bridge construction anymore. Infact with Gatou's money Wave citizen managed to get their hands on, they could buy better ridge material.

With almost all town people worked to build the bridge, it was estimated that the bridge would be finished in 2 weeks time—after they fixed the damage Harry managed to inflict on it, of course.

Harry as one of the man who fought Zabuza who was at the time under Gatou's job list was regarded as one of the town heroes, and thus when he was passing through the streets many people were thanking him and watched him in awe. Harry was a bit uncomfortable with it. It seemed like history repeats itself. Harry could only hope they wouldn't turn their backs on him like the wizarding society did.

Today after he was taught by Haku a bit of healing herbs, the younger man asked him to come with him so he could show Harry his herb collection that couldn't be found in the herbs field. Harry agreed, not feeling any killing intent or bad thought coming from Haku. That day he was having a bit fun learning something new. He even got a good laugh when they saw a drenched Zabuza who still hasn't found his sword that was missing in the ocean after Harry managed to knock it out from Zabuza's hold. Harry decided to help the foul mood nin and using his wand, he managed to locate the sword's position under a minute, much to Zabuza's annoyance who kept searching it for 2 days to no avail and Haku's amusement.

Harry talked with him about their next plan after they healed completely and Zabuza told him that he and Haku would continue their journey. When Zabuza knew that Harry was a traveler himself and didn't have any plan, the former Mist shinobi asked him to join them. Harry declined the offer, telling them that he'd like to stay in the town for another few weeks. He told them that he would probably join them later if they met again though. After another hour of talking with no mention about the previous battle, Harry bade them good-bye and headed back to Tazuna's house.

"…ter this, Harry?" Harry looked up startled to hear someone addressed him.

"Sorry?" he asked Kakashi.

"What do you plan after this? I know that you're some sort of traveler and will probably leave this town soon."

"Are you going to head somewhere after this?" the jounin popped a peanut and crunched it.

Harry rubbed his chin, thinking thoughtfully. Harry shrugged, "I'll probably stay in this town for some weeks until I'm better with this language before I travel to…somewhere. And you?"

"Hm…we'll go back to Konoha as soon as the bridge is finished. Tazuna said that it would probably another 2 weeks here for us," the silver haired jounin noted carefully that Harry was speaking better than 2 days ago. His accent was still obvious though.

"You're not planning to go back to your country?"

"Nah, too much bad memories," and I don't know how to get back either, Harry added mentally. He'd like to have all his possessions and perhaps a house elf or two to make his life easier though.

Five seconds after he thought that there was a familiar loud crack behind him. Harry swallowed and turned his head slowly.

"Mas(pant)ter (pant) Harry (pant) called (pant) us (pant), sir?" an exhausted and singed (and not to mention almost naked elf, because its clothes was torn so badly) house elf managed to ask before it dropped dead to the floor.

There was 5 minutes of silence as all presents in the kitchen staring at the green…thing before Tsunami spectacularly fainted on the spot, Sakura dropped her chopsticks and screamed before she scrambled out of the kitchen only to knock herself out when she didn't see her front by slamming into the wall, Tazuna and Inari joined their female relative to deep unconsciousness and denial, Naruto and Sasuke decided to follow their teammate's lead and screamed girlishly (and simultaneously) as they tried to take their weapons in panic, forgetting that they left their weapon pouches on their room, while Kakashi…Kakashi was staring wide eyed at the elf on the floor with mouth open in disbelief. Harry was staring blankly at the elf he had the fortune (or misfortune, depending on your point of view) to know as Dobby years ago.

And all hell broke loose.

TBC…

He3x, did you actually expect that?

And when I said Dobby dropped dead to the floor, I didn't mean the elf was literally dead, only knocked out.

Please, review!


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: Harry and Naruto aren't mine (does that mean I can claim other characters as mine?)

Author's Note: Obviously you guys didn't expect Dobby's appearance here (actually so do I when I first made this fic). Just for you to know I didn't write the elf just appear in the shinobi world out of the blue (well, actually I did…). I have tried to come up with a story on how Dobby can go there before I wrote the last paragraphs which had his appearance in chapter Six. And when I got a reasonable idea, I wrote about Dobby in last chapter. Hopefully the explanation in this chapter will be enough for you (I didn't make it so detailed though, only general events).

"…" normal Japanese talking.

"…" English talking. If it doesn't come out right, don't blame me. I already use underline for all English talking.

_Italic_ is thinking

**Chapter Seven**

A swift move from Harry and a wand on his grasp later, Harry managed to stun the rest of the house's occupants that were still conscious. He was lucky that he caught them out of guard that they didn't have the time to react. Of course the fact their attentions were fully directed at Dobby (and their panics) helped him.

Harry stood from his seat and walked toward the fainted elf, mind still reeling over the fact that Dobby was actually there with him.

Does that mean he was still in his world? Afterall he didn't think that the elves know about the spell Voldemort had come out with.

With questions swirled on his brain, Harry poked the elf with his wand. The elf twitched. Dobby was still alive. He wondered what happened to it to get singed like that and looked so exhausted. Even its standard Potter's elf uniform was torn beyond belief.

…What should he do now?

If he was still the teenager he was years ago, Harry would have undoubtly panicked and acting like a headless chicken. Now, he was sitting calmly across Dobby's body wondering what he should do after this. There was no doubt that he would have to heal Dobby. No, that wasn't a question. The question was what he should do to these people around him.

Harry weighted his options. Should he move them to their beds and woke them up tomorrow hoping they would think of it as a dream?

Nah, it might work on Tazuna and his family and perhaps Naruto and Sakura, and perhaps even Sasuke, but definitely not Kakashi. The older man was too suspicious for his own good and he would think it there was something strange going on that all people in the house had the same dream.

Should he use memory charm? He was pretty good with that charm after practicing it for years. His line of job…well, he couldn't exactly call it a job as he didn't earn money from it, forced him to use this particular charm occasionally. With muggles already knew about magic, he was hard-pressed to think of a believable story so they wouldn't suspect they were being obliviated. And he was never good at making this kind of story.

Where is Gilderoy Lockhart when you need him?

The only thing that helped him from being discovered was his mastering of legimancy, a must-to-learn study when you were in his position, hunted by many parties that obviously didn't care for his well-being.

Dobby moaned and rolled to its left.

Right, he should take care of the elf soon. He didn't want to make his life more complicated by having a dead elf with him because he didn't heal it. He could take care about others after that. With that, he levitated Dobby to his bed, casting an invisible charm so that no one but him (hopefully) wouldn't be able to see the elf. After casting some healing spells to the short creature and let it sleep Harry went back to the kitchen to take care the others.

Harry sighed, one hand on his hip and another on his chin. He tapped his foot on the floor, wondering what he should do with them. He decided to delve into their minds. The first person he used his legimancy to was Kakashi. Harry decided to take him first because he was most probably the hardest one to convince. The young man noticed that the jounin's mind was quite organized and there seemed to be some locks that locked Kakashi's deepest memories and secrets. His mind was pretty protected and that must be useful for mercenary like him. Harry decided to let those memories alone, respecting his privacy and not wanting the older man to know he was ransacking his mind and searched for Kakashi's most recent ones. He saw that he was training his students in the forest. Harry exited Kakashi's mind. He had an idea of what he should to him.

Harry would like to use memory charm if it wasn't because of the charm couldn't be done to an unconscious man, and even if he had learned advanced legimancy he hasn't mastered it to the point of changing a person's memory with it yet. And he was anxious that Kakashi would attack him as soon as he was revived. Harry decided to deal with him later.

Harry went to the nearest person, which was Tazuna. After waking him and quickly casting a memory charm before the man understood what happened, he began to plant a false memory about him getting drunk to celebrate Gatou's falling reign with his daughter. Muttering a 'sorry', he cast a hangover hex, a spell that would make its victim felt like he was having a hangover. It's a spell that he used quite often when he finished extracting information he needed. Definitely not a pretty spell, especially if you were the victim.

Hey, it needed to be realistic enough so Tazuna wouldn't question his memory.

Harry waved his wand and accioed 2 bottles of sake from one of the cabinets and a cup. He opened a bottle of sake and spilled some of its content on the table for visual effect and poured the sake to fill half of the cup. He also arranged Tazuna's body to sit on the chair (the man dropped from his chair because of his shock) and put his head to rest on the table with his right hand clutched the cup. Harry put the empty bottle on the table.

For Inari he simple put his body on the kid's own bed and wiped his memory of meeting Dobby and putting a new memory that he was bored seeing his grandfather was being served sake by his mother.

Inari's mother's new memory he planted was about after telling Harry to send dinner for the genin team for they didn't come back last night, she served her drunk father sake and slept on the table while listening to his happy ranting. Harry carefully placed her on the chair beside Tazuna and set the other bottle near her hands.

Damn, he was starting to get the hang of doing things like this.

Next, Harry moved to the other occupants. He made the 4 ninjas invisible and levitated them to the woods. There he worked with the pink haired girl first. Reviving her and casting a confusion charm (Harry didn't use this charm on Tazuna and family who were civilians) to make sure she couldn't react fast enough, Harry put her under memory charm and waited until her green eyes were glazed indicating that she was under his spell. Obliviating her memory of Dobby, he put a false memory that after a tiring training Kakashi told his students that they were camping in the woods that night. And after Harry gave them their dinner and went back to Tazuna's house with the dirty plates, she and her teammates were too tired and slept in the woods.

The young wizard used the same spells to Naruto, Sasuke, and lastly Kakashi. Harry was thankful that he was quick enough to use confusion charm when the silver haired jounin suddenly flipped from his position as soon as he was revived. When the man appeared to be under the charm, Harry cast the memory charm, careful not to make any mistake that would prove to be his undoing.

"Obliviate! You don't see any suspicious thing. You're training your students in the forest and told them to camp in the woods for tonight. I delivered you your dinners and you fell asleep when you're reading your book," Harry took Kakashi's Icha Icha Paradise Volume 4 from his pocket pants and put it on Kakashi's hand. With his magic, Harry summoned dry woods and set fire on it. After conjuring a big enough fire to make it looked like the woods were being burned for hours, Harry extinguished the fire.

Harry wiped his sweats, feeling a bit more relieved that his secret was secured. Now he had to deal with Dobby again. He needed to relocate the elf from Tazuna's house to avoid another disastrous meeting and then asked what the elf was doing here and other unanswered questions after it woke up.

He sighed and headed to Tazuna's house only to realize when he was half-way that he still hasn't removed the invisibility charm he cast on the ninjas. Groaning, he went back to the woods.

**The next morning**

Harry was on the kitchen watching a moaning Tazuna who complained about hangover, feeling a bit guilty. His daughter gave him a glass of water and set to clean the kitchen from last night's 'party'.

The front door was slammed open, making the house occupants looked at each other in question. Before they could move to see who their guest was, a thunderous shout echoed on the house.

"…Shi-sensei! I really saw a short green creature last night in the kitchen!" Naruto's voice made Harry froze in his spot.

What the hell? He thought that he had wiped Naruto's memory of Dobby last night. How in the Seventh Heaven he still could remember about it?

"And I told you, you're just dreaming, Naruto!" Sakura shouted. "We're camping in the woods last night and we didn't go here at all yesterday! And short green creature with big eyes and floppy ears? Riiiiiiighhhtt…You should check your brain for memory loss and over creative imagination," Harry didn't know whether he would be relieved or perhaps felt worse when Sakura told the blonde boy about memory loss.

"But Sakura—" the male genin cried out.

"SHUT UP!" Kakashi sighed watching his students. Truth to be told he didn't know what possessed him to make them camp out on the woods WITHOUT any blanket to give them warmth while the area was cold. The pink haired girl complained that the air was chilly and she got cold because of it. Sasuke was shivering too, though Naruto looked completely fine, something that the blond taunted the last remaining Uchiha about (which got him a bump on his head, courtesy of Sakura for annoying her Sasuke-kun). Kakashi was used to that condition so he didn't have any problem with it. The point was, if he told them to camp out last night, why didn't he just let them sleep after dinner and not train them again? That didn't add up. He felt there was something missing there.

"Is there something wrong?" Tsunami asked worriedly.

"There's nothing wrong, Tsunami-san, it's just Naruto dreamed about some short green creature last night and he thought it was real," the jounin replied.

"And I told you, it wasn't a dream!" the Kyuubi vessel shouted heatedly.

"Yeah right dobe, and the sun rises from the West," Naruto gritted his teeth and fought again with Sasuke.

"Fuck you, asshole!"

"Naruto, don't be so rude to Sasuke-kun!"

Kakashi turned to the rest of them and noticed that Harry looked somewhat nervous although when he realized that he was watching him it become a blank unreadable mask.

Kakashi raised his eyebrow, but didn't say anything.

**At Night**

After ensuring that no one was around him, Harry opened the lock of the store room and entered it. There in a conjured bed was Dobby who was sleeping soundlessly. Harry had scanned Dobby's body and found that other than being exhauseted, bruised, and singed, Dobby's life wasn't threatened and so he only used simple healing charm. The elf only nodded time to rest. Time that Harry thought was limited. And so, Harry woke up the elf gently as to not frighten it.

The elf stirred, but it didn't wake up, so Harry shook it harder. The elf suddenly sat on the bed and looked around it wildly before its gaze planted on Harry.

"Master Harry, sir, Master is safe!" the elf cried out loudly. Harry was thankful that he remembered to cast silent charm on the room.

"Yes, Dobby. I'm safe and I'm alive. So…" Harry paused. "What're you doing here? I thought I was sent by Voldemort into different world."

"Master Harry didn't call Dobby, sir? Oh,Dobby is such a foolish creature," Dobby banged its head on a nearby cupboard. Harry sighed, he really didn't have time for this…

"Dobby, stop it!" the elf still banged its head. "Dobby, I command you to stop banging your head!"Harry growled, feeling a bit annoyed.

"Dobby is sorry, master Harry Potter, sir!" the elf blabbed its apologies

"Dobby, look at it and STOP apologizing or punishing yourself!" Harry took a deep breath. "Look, I want you to answer my questions and I don't want you interrupt it by punishing yourself, is that clear?" the elf nodded fearfully, realizing that it interrupted Harry. "Good. Now I want you to tell me how could you appear here?"

"Master called us, sir!" it said simply.

Harry raised his eyebrow. "I called you?" the elf nodded. Harry wondered when he called the elf when he remembered that he wished that he had an elf or two to be there with him seconds before Dobby appeared. "Dobby, I want to know…am I still in our world? I thought that Voldemort sent me to another world with his spell."

The elf shook its head. "No, sir. Harry Potter is in another world. The Dark Lord indeed sent Master here to dispose Master from ruining his plans."

"But how come you're here with me now? I mean unless you know Voldemort's spell and able to use it…" Harry trailed off.

"Dobby didn't know, sir. And Dobby wasn't able to use the spell."

"Then how?" 

"Because Dobby is linked with Master Harry. The bond between Dobby and Master Harry is strong. Stronger than Master Harry's other elves because Dobby bonded with Master Harry personally and not to Potter Castle."

"Does that mean Winky is with you too?"

"No, sir. Our powers weren't strong enough to send 2 of us. When we felt you called us, the others told Dobby to go to you. We elves have the power to be with our master. Only when Master Harry called for us, we can use that ability. Unfortunately there was a barrier that separate us from you. We gathered all of our powers to send Dobby and Winky, but only Dobby can go with that much power. Dobby felt pain all over Dobby's body when Dobby stepped into the portal, but Dobby's magic protected Dobby from death."

_Well shit, all of my elves gathered their powers and only Dobby could go with that much power. Was Voldemort that strong? Was I only lucky enough to kill him? No, there was no way. I was always capable to handle our duel…unless…unless…Voldemort used an artifact to help him send me here. _Harry tried to remember his battle with Voldemort. It was a bit vague because he was in adrenaline high, only reacting on instinct, but Harry remembered about a strange glass orb on Voldemort's neck. The orb did glow when Voldemort cast the spell. Yes, that must be the artifact.

Harry looked up at the staring elf. "Dobby, what do you mean with pain all over your body?" The young wizard asked confusedly. He didn't feel any pain. He was sure of that even if he was knocked out on his journey.

"The portal was filled with energy, sir. Only Dobby's elf magic and others' helps protected Dobby from death. But Dobby was still wounded."

Harry frowned. Dobby's elf magic protected him? Did that mean his magic also protect him? But none of his clothes was torn and he wasn't wounded or anything by the journey. Surely he wasn't that strong…or perhaps…it was his sword that protected him. Afterall there was a demon sealed inside it who would protect him from danger.

Harry scratched his head. He should think about it later. He wasn't that good on theory about why it happened and there was no book around to help him.

"Dobby, are you able to communicate with the other elves or go back to our world?"

"Dobby brought a communication mirror with Dobby, but Dobby doesn't know if it will work or not. And Dobby didn't know whether Dobby can go back or not. Perhaps Dobby can, using Dobby's link to Potter castle as an anchor, but there is no guarantee."

"Did you bring anything else with you?" the elf shook its head and Harry sighed.

"Dobby is so sorry, master. Dobby is a fool," the elf cried.

"Dobby, it's okay. Stop blaming yourself. It's not your fault. I just want to know if there will be something that can help me here. This world…isn't exactly safe either. Deaths and crimes are considered as common here. Sleep, Dobby. You'll need to recuperate your body." Harry said when he saw how tired the elf was.

"But—"

"We can continue this later when you're better. It's not a hurry. Oh, and Dobby, there is something you need to know," Harry paused. "This world didn't have creatures like you," well, if they reacted like that to Dobby when he first arrive, they should have never met him, right? "And I don't want you to be found out by the people here. You can go around, but you mustn't let them know about your existence. As a house elf you already know how to do that, right?" the elf nodded. "The problem is many people here are people with better senses than in our world. They are mercenaries and I don't want you to get captured. Currently, there are 4 of them staying here. And though I doubt they are bad guys, I still don't want you to be known, especially by the oldest of them. I think he has better senses and experiences than the others. Right now I don't want you to do anything, whether it is cooking or cleaning the house as your usual job should be, because that would make people suspicious to see no one around do that. These people are a bit…say… paranoid. I want you to recuperate before I can think something for you. Is that clear?" the elf almost objected before being reminded that it was its master's command. The elf reluctantly nodded.

"Yes, master Harry."

"Good. I have taken some food from the kitchen for you and a jug of water for you to drink," Harry tilted his head to a small dusty table that was put in the corner of the room. Harry cast a cleaning charm and the table was clean. He had cleaned the bed Dobby was using but have no time to clean other things. The elf would do it on its own when it felt better.

Harry exited the store room and went back to his bed, passing Naruto's and Sasuke's futons. He heard the blonde boy mumbled about green creature. Harry's eyes went wide.

_What the hell? I thought I had removed his memory twice? How in the fucking hell he still remember about it?_

Harry sat on his bed, eyes were focused on the sleeping boy. Perhaps he should use legimancy (AN: guys, is the right name legimancy or legimency? I kinda forgot) on him to find what was wrong with hi to be able to resist HIS memory charm.

Harry closed his eyes and entered Naruto's mind.

TBC…

Alright, another cliffhanger! Lovely, isn't it?

So now that the mystery of Dobby is finished, hand me your review, please!

Btw, I'm currently using dial-up connection here. Still in my hometown. Expensive fee, so I'd better make it quick. For others who are waiting for the update of my other fics…since almost all of the active fics are more than 10 chapters, I don't remember all the data and thus I can't write them (especially Soragakure with its tons of OC characters) in my hometown. I'll be able to do that when I'm back in Bandung, which is next week.


	8. Chapter 8

Author's Note: Have the mood to write this after rereading this fic. And it's realllyyy longer than previous chapters. And it is a bit like Soragakure's 17th chapter, both in what it contains and its story length. No action, but I'm sure you'll like it.

Chapter Eight

When he opened his eyes, Harry found himself in a…sewer? He looked around him again to make sure he saw the real thing.

'Why would the kid have a sewer as the representation of his mind?' He thought as he explored the place.

It had felt like an hour traveling the sewer, until Harry stopped walking. He had walked so long and he couldn't even find one of the boy's memories at all! Just how complicated was the layout?

Just as he thought that, he found a heavily locked metal door in the end of a dark and wet hallway. Harry touched the door in trepidation, wondering just what kind of memory inside that Naruto wanted to bury away was.

He was soon assaulted by images of Naruto being glared hatefully by the villagers, being thrown out of various shops, the keeper of the orphanage abused him, giving him meager food and the worst of the food and how the children on the orphanage used the keeper's hatred for their advantage, being beaten by drunkard while the people who watched the scene didn't give him a hand and some even participated, children refused to be his friends because their parents told them he was a bad kid and should be avoided at all cost, villagers threw thrashes to him at the road, people trying to ki— Harry wrenched his hand away from the metal door and the images stopped running on his mind. Harry panted, as if he had just having a nightmare.

"Geez, the kid had even worse childhood than me," Harry muttered to himself in disbelief. He looked at the sewer again. It was no wonder that the representation of his mind was a dirty and dingy sewer with broken pipes. The kid's mind was so complicated that his mind represented it with this way.

Harry didn't understand why those people did that to Naruto. Sure, the boy was a tad too enthusiastic and perhaps it annoyed them, but he _was_ a kid. Harry had a feeling that it had something to do with the strange vibe he felt when he was around Naruto.

He walked away from the metal door and gave it one last sad look. It was then he heard a low reverberated growl. He stopped on his spot and listened carefully. He heard it again. He decided to find the source of the noise.

As he walked closer to the source of the voice, he felt the heavier and tenser. He found an immense gate in front of him. He couldn't see beyond it, but he could hear the rumble coming from inside the gate. He walked closer to the gate, only to find something slammed the enormous gate harshly and that something roared furiously. To have such a big gate jerked like that, that something must be…enormous. Harry took a step back.

Harry's emerald orbs stared at the 2 huge red slitted ones.

"**_A visitor…you're not my host."_** Harry could see the eyes lowered and from the dimmed light he could see a snout. It—whatever it was—sniffed him from behind the locked gate. **_"So you're the demon I have sensed since days ago. What is your species? I have never come across any of your kind."_**

"A thunder demon. A humanoid one."

"**_Humanoid thunder demon? You're lying!" _**the demon hissed accusingly, Harry could see his sharp fangs. **_"There is NO humanoid demon! And you look more like the despicable human than a demon."_**

"That's because I came from another world apparently," Harry's eyes became slitted and he could now see inside the dark cage. "I see that you're of a beast demon kind. A fox. A ninetails fox to be precise," he counted its tails. "And I don't see the reason so important you ask me why I look like a human," Harry said, deciding to tell the fox demon that he was indeed a demon instead of a human that had merged half of his soul with a demon's one. This way he felt that the fox would speak with him equally.

His sword in the real world glowed and later in Naruto's mind landscape, a silhouette of a winged humanoid demon as huge as the fox demon appeared behind the black haired young man. Lightning crackled around its enormous body.

"**_Impressive…"_** Kyuubi could feel its power, and as a challenge its red chakra engulfed him. **_"It will be an experience to fight against a demon from another realm, but alas this impeccable seal will not allow me to do so," _**the red chakra leaked out of the spaces among the gate's trellises. The silhouette moved its hands to shield his body from the energy that reached him. The humanoid demon growled and barred its sharp fangs to the fox demon which replied in the same kind.

"You're sealed…inside a human. This blonde boy's body," Harry stated in realization. That was why Naruto was hated by the people. People hated something they didn't understand. Just like what happened to the people in his world, both muggles or wizards. "You're the reason the boy is hated."

"**_Indeed. Those fools thought that he was me. They didn't understand that there was no way a frail and weak human boy was me. It was funny in a way," _**the beast grunted. **_"The man who sealed me inside him hoped that he would be regarded as hero because he became my jailor. What a foolish thought! He didn't understand that human—"_**

"Feared what they didn't understand," Harry finished it. The wizards feared him because of his parsel ability and later because of his demon sword and terrifying ability.

"**_Yes. We demon hold the ultimate power! Immortality! Humans with their short life time and limited power envy us and in turn they start to either worship or fear us. Unseal me, and we can destroy them together_**," the fox gave him a demonic grin.

"Unfortunately I am in the mission to understand how human mind works, so I can't do that," Harry refused the offer, causing Kyuubi to give a roar of fury and slam the sealed gate. "Beside, even if I want to, I won't be able to do that. The seal is different than in my homeworld." The fox demon calmed. "It is lucky that we demon can communicate mentally, or I won't even know what you're talking about. I have to go now, perhaps I'll visit you later. Oh by the way if you truly want freedom, shouldn't you ask it to the boy? Perhaps he can help you with that," Harry's body shimmered as he started to vanish.

"**_Right…" _**Kyuubi drawled.**_ "That idiotic brat will be able to free me," _**it growled sarcastically as it watched Harry vanished out of sight with envy. It longed for freedom, but it was sealed and to make the matter worse the cage was cramped. It lay on the floor and sighed, full with boredom.

Both Harry and Kyuubi were later reminded that they didn't ask the name of the other and make a mental note to do that in the next meeting, _if_ they ever met again.

Harry opened his eyes and eyed the blonde kid with unreadable look. He looked at his blade which no longer glowed and then at Sasuke who he had charmed to sleep deeply. He sighed and laid on the bed, clutching his sword. It was the first time he had seen another demon aside from his and it was quite an experience.

He wondered if this new information would change his life.

He froze when he realized he hadn't asked the fox demon about Naruto's returning memory about Dobby, but decided that since the others think he was just dreaming it would be okay and left it at that.

0-0 0-0 0-0

A week after Gatou's imminent downfall, Tazuna's family, Harry, and the Leaf-nins gathered like usual. Naruto was no longer avoiding him as he no longer felt Kyuubi stirring inside when Harry was around, instead he felt safer now around him and the boy started to become closer with him. Harry was already pretty fluent speaking Japanese now, although he still stumbled once or twice when he didn't know some words. Sasuke was still wary around him and decided to stand at a safe distance between them, not that Harry really cared much. If the kid wanted to avoid him, it was fine. Sakura was polite but never seek for his presence constantly like Inari or Naruto did.

The bridge would be finished in a few weeks and so the Leaf-nin would go back to Konoha soon.

"I'll take care the food tonight," Harry informed, as he stood up to exit the house.

"Wait, I'll go with you!" Kakashi said, causing eyebrows to shoot up. He had never offered to do that. The silver haired nin looked at his students. "You can train on your own today," his students looked at their sensei in dumbfounded. "Is that okay with you?" he turned to Harry.

"…I suppose so."

Tsunami gave him enough money to buy food that he needed, refusing his offer to buy them with his own money, saying that he had done much more by saving the village. She was quite adamant with that and Harry gave up, knowing that she wouldn't back out. She didn't back out after Gatou's downfall and she wouldn't do it now.

The two men walked to the market in silence. Harry was wondering what Kakashi wanted from him, while Kakashi was wondering on how to approach him.

Harry was thinking of training in the lake again, but Kakashi's presence disrupt his plan, so he decided to go fishing and swimming in the lake or perhaps pick up some herbs in the fields that Haku told him about.

"So," the ninja started the conversation. "Have decided your next destination?"

"Not yet, but I think I'll go soon after I gather enough information about the continent," Harry came up with a story that he was traveling the world via the ocean with a ship when hurricane blew it off course and washed him up to the shore of Wave main island 5 days after Dobby's arrival. The elf was helping Tsunami cleaning the house secretly and so far no one realized her existence, because Dobby was really careful and stopped working when the ninjas were in the house. "Zabuza and Haku are already gone, but I'm hoping to meet them again and then perhaps I'll travel with them later."

"Hmm…are you interested to go to our village?" Harry's face turned toward him. He was frowning. "It isn't safe to travel alone, especially if you still don't know much of the terrain. There are bandits and ninjas around. Living in town isn't the same as living in the wilderness. You can gain more info and rumor in Konoha."

"..That's an interesting offer, but won't you have a problem bringing in a stranger without document into your _hidden_ village?"

"Even though it's called a hidden village, it isn't as reclusive as it sounds. Merchants enter and exit the village all the time. And document can be easily created. I'm sure it won't be too hard to make a document for you in Wave. The people felt like they owed you something, afterall," Harry winced, remembering the wizards' and witches' behavior when he first entered the magical world.

"You mean I can come and go as I please?" Harry asked skeptically. The security of the mercenary guild sounded…lax.

"Well, perhaps not as you please. We have to check everything over. If you want to stay in Konoha for a longer time, you can go as new trader in town…or perhaps installed as our ninja," Kakashi added the last part suggestively, causing Harry to snort.

"I can see your attempt, Kakashi, though you don't really bother to conceal it, right?" the silver haired ninja smiled underneath his mask. "Thanks for the offer, but I don't think I want to be a ninja, much less making an allegiance to a hidden village that I don't even know. I don't want to be bound. But you're right when you say that this place is dangerous and that I'm unfamiliar with the terrain though. And I also wonder about how a hidden village works. There's so much things I don't understand that I'll need time to learn it." The image of a beaten down Naruto flashed on his mind. And he was also worried of the kid.

"So, what's your decision? Do you want to _visit_ Konoha?" he emphasized on the word visit.

"Perhaps I'll take your offer…I'll go there as a trader then," Harry finished with a smile.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "What thing exactly will you sell?"

The younger man put his hands on his hip. "For information, I'm able to forge weapon, you know. I create the sword that I used."

Kakashi blinked. That was new news. "You're a blacksmith?"

"Well, if that's the correct term, then yes, I am a blacksmith. I have never forged weapons like shuriken or kunai before though. So I should learn it first."

"…Yes, perhaps you should," though Kakashi thought that perhaps it would be easy to learn that if what he said about him creating that lightning sword was true. It was truly a masterpiece, a sword that only special people like the seven swordsmen of the mist should be privileged to have. "Are you interested to see how the blacksmiths in this area create metal tools? I don't think they make ninja's weapons, but they're still forging metal tools. And I think you should create some first before going back to Konoha, rather than first making there."

Harry contemplated this for a moment. "Yes, I think you're right," he decided to forgo his swimming and fishing plan. "Uhm…I'll really be able to exit the village later without much problem, right?"

Kakashi nodded. "I guarantee it. Though if you really want to go from there so soon, you shouldn't make your own shop, but work as an assistant to a blacksmith in Konoha. That way you can learn as you work. You need to have a workshop after all."

"Let's just see it later," Harry said. "It isn't like I'll really go to Konoha or work as a blacksmith. I can even be a chef, if I want to." Kakashi only nodded, as they entered the grocery shop.

0-0 0-0 0-0

"You'll go with them to Konoha too?" Tsunami seemed sad.

"I don't know. It's a possibility," she bit her lips and nodded, accepting his decision. It was nice to have Harry in the household and she'd like if he could stay with them in Wave. Inari looked at him as a big brother. "I'll go with Kakashi to the blacksmith now. I'll be back to make dinner," she nodded. "Uh, and actually I'd like to call a favor…" he said hesitatedly.

"If it is within my power," Tsunami answered.

"Well, you know that I have no document…" he trailed off. A smile appeared on Tsunami's face.

"Consider it done. I'll ask some forms and you can fill them so I can ask the administration to create it for you."

"Thank you," Harry said in relied.

"It's not a problem," she watched as Harry exited the house with Kakashi. The grocery was put on the kitchen table. She sighed at it and stored the grocery, not knowing that someone was listening the conversation.

In his hidden room, Dobby decided that he would help his master as best as he could. He eyed the two-way mirror with a sigh and stored it somewhere safe.

0-0 0-0 0-0

Harry found out from his visit that the forging process and the metal used were different than what he used to, but knew that it wouldn't be a problem. The blacksmiths didn't mind teaching him who they taught as one of their saviors and they did their job eagerly as they thought it was an honor.

Harry mastered the method in no time and he could be found busily making his own metal tools in their workshop everyday. Since none of the blacksmiths there knew how to create ninja weapons (and if they did create it, it wouldn't be as good as even a standard ninja kit as they didn't know the exact method) he had to experiment on his own with Kakashi giving him tips and information about what he knew of ninja weapons. It was also Kakashi and the genins who tested the created weapons.

The night before their departure, Harry who had managed to create a cart and a half of successful metal utensils, loaded them to the 2 wagons he bought in the morning, complete with the 4 horses. Two third of them were ninja weapons like shuriken, kunai, senbon, wakizashi, katana, arrow and even broad sword that he often made in his own world under Kienne's teaching, while the rest was home utensils, all of whom sharp utensils, like kitchen knives.

Harry was still wondering whether he would only work as an assistant or make his own shop though. If he made his own shop, he'd lose more time, while he wanted to master his sword better. Not to mention that would mean he'd have to make a contract and then find and buy or rent a workshop, which meant he would be in Konoha for quite some time. In the other hand if he became an assistant, he would have longer spare time (provided that the boss wasn't sadist) and could go away from Konoha sooner, not to mention that perhaps he could learn more by being an assistant, no matter that Kakashi sad that the quality of his creations were much above average, despite him learning the new method in just few weeks. But he was still worried of the blonde haired kid.

"If you're on your own, you'll be able to create your own creation without much limitation," Kakashi was remembering about the lightning sword. He was hoping that Harry would make another special sword like that (and perhaps let him to use it). He also hoped to have more time to observe the younger man. Sandaime would be interested to know about his lightning sword too. He wondered if Harry could recreate the sword raijin that had been stolen years ago by Rokusho Aoi.

"…I guess so," although Master Keinne was strict, he never limited Harry when he made his weapon, so Harry was actually free to do as he wished. Beside, he could always use magic to cut down the time needed to finish the weapon and he also had Dobby to help him…which bring to the next question, how was he going to bring Dobby with him?

Later Dobby solved this problem by telling Harry that he could wait in Wave and waited until Harry called him up and teleporting to where he was. The black haired young man wanted to slap his forehead for ever forgetting of the house elf's ability.

"Er…Kakashi, you already know the house I wanted to buy, right?" Harry asked him as he treated one of his horses, a light brown mare with soft white mane, expertly. The horse seemed to enjoy it, Kakashi noted.

"Yes, a medium sized house in the outskirt of the village complete with large field for you to grow herbs. There are some of those in Konoha, according to the letter from the messenger bird. But why do you want to buy a house anyway? Why don't you just buy an apartment in town? It will be easier. And house with large land is quite expensive. By the way, have you ever ride horse before this? You seemed…at ease with them."

"I don't like cramp space," he was used staying in his immense family manor with its large field or staying outdoor when he was hiding from his pursuers. "And I'd like to plant some herbs and let the horses run freely. I'm planning to keep them, by the way," Harry added hastily when Kakashi stared at him when he mentioned the horses. "And money is of no concern. I can pay it up front, so don't worry. Beside, I can always rent or sell it later if I ever decide to leave Konoha. And about the horses…yes, I'm used riding them when I go back to my family manor," Harry didn't notice that he slipped something about his previous life. "And I grow to like them. They're good for transport, sport, and as pets," and it would be easier to go somewhere secluded to practice his sword.

"Well…if that's what you want," he trailed off.

"That's exactly what I want. By the way how much should I pay for guarding me until we arrive in Konoha?" Team 7 jounin instructor shook his head.

"No need. It is I who invite you to go there anyway."

"But—"

"But I'm sure the children would be thrilled if you give them some tip," the jounin winked, causing Harry to laugh. Inwardly, Kakashi was wondering where the hell Harry put the money was. He didn't seem to bring anything aside from his sword and a pouch. Unless he put all his money on the bank before the Leaf-nins arrived on Wave country.

The next morning the people of Wave stood in the Great Naruto Bridge (a fact that always caused Naruto to blush in proud embarrassment when he remembered it and an annoyance to Sakura, Sasuke didn't care, while Kakashi was amused to no end) to bid good bye to their saviors. Inari was crying and hugged both Naruto and Harry, causing awkward situations for the two who wasn't used to be hugged (Naruto for reason obvious, while Harry when he was before eleven years old and after his friends died). Dobby stood in some distance, disillusioning himself so no once could see him, hoping so that Harry could arrive to Konoha fast, so he could reunite with his master soon.

Naruto was with Harry, while Sasuke and Sakura were with Kakashi who drove the second wagon. The blonde boy didn't seem to mind that Sasuke was with Sakura, albeit not alone, in the second wagon, too busy telling Harry about the greatness of Konoha (Harry wondered how he could appear so happy with the town whose villagers were the most probably the ones who beat him). In return Harry told him about the process of forging and the different characteristic of different metals, which actually got Naruto's attention who was famous for his inability to listen to any kind lecture, for once. The two seemed to hitch it off with each other. The same couldn't' be said to Sasuke who was ready to strangle the pink haired girl if she ever opened her mouth again.

They arrived in Konoha 4 days later (as using the cart was faster than walking—with normal people like Tazuna anyway) without a hitch, well okay there were 5 bandit attacks but they were easily dispatched read: beaten the crap out of them). Harry was eyeing the big wall of Konoha in silence. It was…huge, that much for sure. After checking their papers, the chuunin guards allowed them to enter the village, throwing a dirty look at Naruto who ignored it. Harry sent a questioning look at Kakashi who shrugged, although he already knew the reason.

Harry was led to Hokage's tower (as it was also the administration tower) by Kakashi and his team. Ion his way to the tower, he was watching ninjas jumping around the roofs as if it was natural (it was, for them), but didn't say anything. After placing his carts on the empty field outside the tower (in which Kakashi told him that it was safe to leave them there alone and as other merchants did it too) he was led to Hokage, which made him nervous.

"Don't worry. It's actually because the protocol instruct us to go to the mission center first to report about our mission and the Hokage is just working there sometimes," he tried to calm him. Actually they could've led him to the associated clerk where Harry could solve his problem while they went to the mission center and later picked him up, but Harry didn't know that. "Beside, the division you should go is only a room away from the mission center, so I'm sure we can ask someone to just work your problem there, while we report back." Harry nodded.

"Hokage-sama, team 7 is reporting back after mission," Harry watched the wrinkled old man with the weird garb, who was apparently the leader of Konoha, or so Naruto said, took out his pipe from his mouth.

The old man nodded with a smile. "Welcome back, team 7."

"Old man, I'm back!" Naruto shouted excitedly, causing him to laugh. Harry noted that it was truly a genuine laugh and he seemed to care of the young boy.

"So, how's your journey, Naruto?" the man looked at Harry with a nod, in which Harry replied in the same kind.

"It's so cool! We fight this A-rank missing-nin, what's his name again? Ah, Momochi Zabuza!"

"WHAAAATTTT!" Harry turned around to see a young man with a scar across his face, who had just entered the mission center, shouted loudly.

"IRUKA-SENSEI!" Naruto ran and hugged his former teacher. Harry could only blink as he watched the man, Iruka, fuzzed over Naruto and acted like a panicked mother-hen. It seemed that he wasn't alone as he first though, afterall.

After Kakashi retold the mission progress, Hokage and Iruka turned to the unfamiliar young man who hadn't said anything yet.

"And uh…forgive me (for not introducing him first), this is Potter Harry (Harry winced as Kakashi pronounced his name as Pottaru Herri). We met him in Wave and he had helped us there. He'd like to trade here," Kakashi's eyes was telling sandaime 'I'll tell you later'. "And perhaps buy a house. I have sent a message to the people who worked in that division, so they should've worked on it."

Harry Potter bowed slightly. "My name is _Potter Harry_ (here, he glared at Kakashi who raised an eyebrow at Harry's distaste on the way he pronounced his name wrong) and it's nice to meet you."

"Umino Iruka. Likewise." Iruka smiled and bowed back.

"And I'm the third Hokage, sandaime," Sarutobi gave a nod. "So you're interested to trade here?" Harry nodded. "What would you like to sell?"

"I'm a blacksmith so I sell metal weapons and metal home utensils. Mostly weapons though," Hokage nodded and eyed the silk covered blade.

"Can I see your work?" he asked lightly.

"Er…I left them on the carts," Harry rubbed the back of his head.

Just as The Third wanted to ask about the sword on his back, Naruto opened his mouth. "Hey, I have some of your works!" he took out several kunais on his weapon pouch, not realizing that sandaime was about to strangle him. The young blond handed the kunais to sandaime who accepted them with annoyance, although he didn't show it outside.

"Hm…it's good," he tapped the kunais with each other and listened to the sound it made and searched for any crack they might have. He threw and caught the kunai with his hand, testing their weight. "And it's well-balanced," he threw one of the kunai to the wooden wall like a dart board. The kunai was imbedded on the wall tightly. "And sharp," the ninjas on the mission center were now watching the display and listening sandaime's praise. It was like Harry had a free unexpected advertisement. "It's good. Your weapons will sell well," he praised. Inwardly, sandaime was actually impressed. Kakashi told him using the messenger bird that Harry had just learned the method of creating the weapons that was used there.

"Thank you."

"Oh, and is that another of your creation?" sandaime eyed the bundle strapped behind his back.

"…Yes," Harry said with some reluctance.

"Can I see it?"

"…I suppose," Harry unfastened the bundle and opened the cover. There were gasps and whistles from the ninjas when they saw it. Some sneered at it, thinking that it was merely a display sword.

"Hm…I don't think I have seen this kind of metal. What is it?"

"They're composite actually. And one of the materials is very hard to come by. I was lucky to be able to get it. Steel, titanium, a few other metals…and mithril." Let's just assume that in Naruto's world they already knew of steel, but don't know about titanium (or mithril). Sandaime nodded, knowing that Harry was unwilling to tell them more about the metals.

"Can I touch it?"

"…Only if it allow you," the ninjas blinked at this. "It has its own…consciousness, I guess," he added and put the sword on the table across sandaime.

"Impressive. A sword that has its own consciousness," Sarutobi repeated. The others agreed with him. It must be a special sword just like the swords that were owned by the seven swordsmen of the Mist. The sword let out a spark of lightning just as sandaime's fingers moved to touch it, as if it was a warning. The sword didn't like the man trying to dig out information from its master and its master was wary of him. "Hm…perhaps it doesn't allow me to touch it after all," he said with a smile, although inwardly he was disappointed.

"Yes, perhaps," the black haired young man took his sword back.

"Have you thought of making another masterpiece like that?" the wizard looked at him.

"No. I don't think I ever will." Before sandaime could even throw the question, Harry interrupted, "I was almost killed when I created it. My teacher said that I was lucky to go in deep coma for only a month, instead of being buried 6 feet underground. I don't want a repeat of experience," the Leaf-nins seemed disheartened by the fact.

"Hm…I understand. Well, welcome to Konoha. I hope you enjoy your stay here," Iruka led the man to the registry (not to be a citizen, mind you), while team 7 stay rooted on their place. Team 7 received their B-rank payment (or should it be A-rank?) afterwards and naruto left to search Harry. Sasuke went back to his house, stalked by his pink haired fan girl, and Kakashi was motioned to follow sandaime to his office.

"So, what do you think of our guest?" Konoha's leader sat on his comfy seat, putting down his official hat on the table.

"He's hiding something, but who isn't," Kakashi shrugged.

"Too true. Are you sure he can't even speak any of our language before?" the jounin nodded. "Either he's genius or he's faking it, but I see you think that he really couldn't speak our language before," the much older man eyed his younger subordinate. "So let's state what we know about him, which isn't very much, I'm afraid," Sarutobi rubbed his head. "Young man, 19 years old almost twenty, a blacksmith, a sword user, has a special sword he made on his own that could emit lightning, unknown jutsu user that seemed to require no chakra, able to heal someone dying, didn't know our language, anything else you're able to find about him?"

"He can cook, and he can ride horse without hitch, apparently his family own a manor which tell us that he's quite wealthy. Our client's daughter said that he gave her a pouch of gold for saving him. And Naruto claimed that his _tenant_ felt restless the first week the young man was around him," Sarutobi looked up so fast, his neck almost cracked. "Although afterward he felt quite the opposite. He felt safer around him. Is it possible that he's similar to…Naruto?" Kakashi asked his superior.

"It's possible," a new voice said from the window. Kakashi dropped the kunai that was already on his grasp when he saw who it was.

"Jiraiya-san," he greeted his grand-sensei (AN: well, Jiraiya is the teacher of his teacher). "What're you doing he—"

Jiraiya cut it off. "Old man here threatened me to return to Konoha soon or I'll face dire consequence," he sighed forlornly. "Have you seen any seal on his body?"

"Unfortunately he's a man, and thus I don't see the point of peeking him," the jounin quipped in humor. "Not to mention that even if he has the seal, we won't be able to see it unless he mold chakra, and so far he didn't use any chakra-based technique yet," he reminded the ong white haired sennin.

"I guess that we just have to observe him for now," Jiraiya rubbed the back of his head.

"Or we could ask a Hyuuga to help us," the Third suggested.

The other two ninjas looked at each other. "That can work," they said simultaneously.

0-0 0-0 0-0

Three hours later, Harry was on his way to the jewelry shop that was recommended by Iruka (who was looking at him strangely for asking the direction of a jewelry shop of all places) with a palm-sized red ruby and other gems on his leather pouch. He entered the store, noting the luxury inside, and walked to the counter.

"What can we help you with?" a polite clerk asked him.

"I want to sell several gems," Harry put his leather pouch on the table and opened it in front of the brown haired man.

"T-These are," he stuttered and his eyes widened when he saw the precious gems.

"How much are you willing to pay them for?"

The man straightened himself and looked at him directly in the eyes. "They don't worth much," Harry raised his eyebrow. The man's action before betrayed his statement right now. "They're just imitations, albeit very beautiful imitations. Only some of them are real gems," a fat woman with a cat trying to escape her death grip entered the store and walked to the counter. "But we'll kindly buy them all for 2000 ryo." Harry was ready to kill the clerk right here and then because he knew they worth much more when a woman behind him squealed and slammed her pudgy hands on the counter, leaving the cat to be able to breath. She caught her cat before it had time to escape, however, unfortunately for the cat.

"What beautiful gems they are!"

"M-M'lady!" the clerk stuttered in fear. He knew that she was a gem expert and thus would know they were real gems, and not imitations just like he had just claimed. He was so screwed.

"You're selling them, young man?" the woman stared at Harry with a wide smile. Harry looked at the brown haired jackass who was trying to trick him from the corner of his eyes.

A polite smile was plastered on his face. "Yes, ma'am. Are you interested on them? But the clerk said they were cheap imitations though."

Her eyes widened comically when she heard they were imitations. "Imitations you said? Impossible. They're real gems. Real perfectly cut gems," she took the ruby and squinted her eyes with a small smile, before she put it back on the counter and then turned an angry glare at the frightened employee. "Are you trying to trick this gentleman, you low peasant!" she hissed. Whoever she was she had high standing in the society, Harry noted with a small grin. "I swear that I won't come to this deceitful place ever again!" she ranted. The manager of the store quickly went there to avoid loosing his most important customer.

"I'm sorry, M'lady. It seems that we weren't careful when we selected him as our staffs," he hurriedly apologized. "I'm sure we can solve this matter easily," he tried to placate her anger.

It was half an hour later that Harry exited the store with a sum of money as compensation and a check of half a million ryo from the woman who was apparently the wife of Fire Country's Lord as payment for the gems and a satisfaction when the man was fired from his job. All in all it wasn't a bad day and it seemed that luck hadn't left him yet.

"Wow, I don't know that the gems worth so much," his selected house _and_ land was 'only' 95.000 ryo. He wouldn't have to worry about money here. He was in the jewelry store to gauge the price of the gems. He was lucky to find a customer who highly appreciated beautiful gems and was willing to pay for them. (AN: no flame about this, let's just say that she is a mad collector)

Opening a new account on the bank where he could clear the check, he filled the account with the money he had just acquired. He still could feel the gaze of the shocked teller behind his back.

Another 2 hours later, Harry sighed in relief as he had just passed the complicated beaucracy, and now was the proud owner of a plot of a land (complete with the house) and a medium sized store in Konoha.

As the sun almost dawned, and Harry figured he wouldn't have time to explore his newly bought home or store, he decided to crash on a nearby hotel and paid someone to take care his horses and the carts, just like most merchants from outside village usually did. He immediately slept just as his head touched the pillow. He had forgotten about Dobby who was patiently waiting on Wave to be called, as he drifted to sleep peacefully, his sword lay on the bed beside him.

0-0 0-0 0-0

The next morning…actually it was almost 12 in the afternoon, a grumpy genin team led by the ever late Kakashi went inside the mission center for another mission. Yesterday when they were offered a vacation for their first long term mission, Sasuke and Naruto rejected it, saying that they were having vacation too long (they claimed that the time after Gatou's downfall was a holiday, which was true in some way). Sakura kept her opinion to herself, although inwardly her Inner-Sakura wanted to tear them both from limb to limbs.

"So, what is it, old man? Another C-rank? Guarding princess? Beat—"

"It's another D-rank for you."

"I'll do i—WHAT!" the blonde boy shouted in shock. "D-D rank? But—" he protested.

"The man who requested it said that he wanted team 7 to do the mission," Sarutobi put down his pipes. "It's actually 2 D-rank missions."

"Who? Who is the one who requested us?" Naruto asked excitedly.

"The guest you brought with you."

"Huh?" Naruto blinked.

"The one who requested us was Harry-san?" Sakura correctly deducted. The hokage smiled and nodded.

"He needed you to help him with the house and store he had just bought yesterday. That includes cleaning, painting, loading, etc. So are you up to it, or do I have to refuse the mission?"

"Of course we have to take it!" Naruto shouted. "It's Harry-san we're talking about!" Sarutobi frowned inwardly, seeing Naruto appeared to like the mysterious Potter Harry so much.

"Well, then this is the address of his store. He was there right now and was waiting for you. Now, you're dismissed." Naruto saluted and dashed out of the room. The others had no choice, but to follow him, as he was the one who took the paper with the store address written on it.

Naruto landed on the ground and looked at a store that had 2 carts in the front. He recognized the horses and deemed that it was the right address.

"Harry-san!" the blond peeked in his head inside the store from the opened wooden door. He could see a figure's back facing him. The man was apparently inspecting the store.

The man turned and saw him. "Naruto! Come inside!" the boy complied. "Where are your friends?" as if on cue, they entered the empty store afterwards.

"Sorry that we're late. Kakashi-sensei as usual was 'lost in the road of life'," he grumbled, causing the older man to laugh.

"Not a problem. Hokage-san did warn me about his quirk, although he wasn't really that late at all in Wave, was he?"

Kyuubi vessel blinked. "Now that you say it, you're right," he said in realization, ignoring that the one they were talking about was behind him, eyes twitching. "Anywaaayy, what do you want me to do?"

"Well I had bought display racks and other things needed before you came. I'm sure that they'll deliver them soon. Why don't we clean this place first? Oh, but I haven't bought any cleaning tools," he rubbed his head sheepishly. "Hiya, Hatake-san!" he greeted the jounin, as if he had just realized his presence. The jounin was a bit peeved by it, not used to be treated like that. It should be him who should do that (_cough_ Gai _cough_). "Sasuke and Sakura too!" He wrote on a piece of paper for a moment and gave it to Sakura. "Sorry, can you buy them from me?" he gave her an sum of money on her hand. "Is it enough?"

"Uh, it's more than enough," she eyed the money on her hand in shock.

"You can use the change for buying lunch for your team," he suggested.

"Thanks, Harry-san," the three genins dashed out of the store.

"So, what do you think of this place?" Kakashi inquired.

"It's different from Wave, that's for sure. And it looks…friendlier than a hidden village I thought should be."

"Oh, how so?"

"Well, for a ninja village the atmosphere isn't really tense. In fact I would think this place as normal town, if not for people leaping from roof to roof, or the giant wall surrounding the town," Kakashi nodded in agreement. Konoha's atmosphere was friendlier than most other hidden villages.

"Where's your sword?" he asked when he didn't see it.

"I left it on my hotel room," Harry said as he put the lamp on the light bulb. He pushed the switch and watched in satisfaction, as the bulb illuminated the previously dark room.

"You left...your sword?" the masked jounin asked disbelievingly. No true ninja ever left home without their weapons (except if said ninja was taijutsu specialist). Well that proved that Harry wasn't a ninja, as he had claimed before. "Aren't you worried of getting it stolen?"

Harry snickered. "Then the thief will get the shock in his life," and when he said 'shock', he really meant it. "No one other than me can use it anyway." And he still had his wand with him. There was no one hunting him here, so he wasn't worried about that. And he was sure that he could call his sword if it was necessary, just like what happened in Wave.

Harry went to catalogue the goods in the carts, as they waited for the three genins, while Kakashi gave him some pointers here and there. When the genins arrived with the brooms, mops, buckets, and other things, they started to clean the store, with Harry helping them. As usual Kakashi left them to read while they fend themselves. Dusts were swept off, the wooden floor was moped and polished, along with the wooden wall, and the ceiling was freshly painted. When they were finished, the delivery came, and the genins helped the workers to take in the furniture. They also changed the outward appearance of the store. Putting frameless tempered glass and door, and also installing harmonica door for securing the store when it was closed.

Harry decided to call it off when he heard the ninja's stomachs were rumbling. They put all the barrels and boxes that contained his creations and locked the door. It was past dawn when they were finished. He offered to take them to dinner, but Sasuke and Kakashi refused, which in turn caused Sakura to refuse it too. So Harry only treated Naruto. They went to BBQ restaurant nearby and Naruto found Team 10 was there.

"Hey, Chouji, Shikamaru, Ino!" he called and blinked when he saw their jounin teacher. "And ee to…" he didn't know the smoking man's name. The three genins watched the man behind Naruto in curiosity.

Asuma blinked. "Sarutobi Asuma,' he answered.

"Oh yea, Asuma-san. And um, this is Potter Harry, a new resident in Konoha. He's my team's current client," Harry nodded. Ino looked at him from head to toe, causing Harry to fidget as he felt like a lab rat, and smiled.

"Hi, Harry-san, I'm Yamanaka Ino, but you can call me Ino-chan!" she greeted, causing her team to groan inwardly.

"Er…Nice to meet you, I'm Harry Potter, I mean, Potter Harry," he offered his hand, which caused the others to stare at it. Harry was starting to get uncomfortable. "Er…right. Sorry I forget that this place has different custom," he retracted his hand.

"Nara Shikamaru," the lazy-looking boy said and nodded slightly.

"Akimichi Chouji. Nice to meet you too," the fat boy greeted him with a polite smile.

"Sarutobi Asuma. So you're a new resident here?"

"Yes, he is. And he'll open a new weapon store here soon," Naruto answered for Harry.

"Ah, you must be the rumored man then," when he saw Harry's confused look, he elaborated, "It is said that there is a new blacksmith that will doing trade here who was praised by sandaime himself."

"Oh…that. I mean, yes, I am him."

"Interesting. I'll be sure to visit your store some time soon."

"Thanks," Harry took a seat in the table beside team 10's table, Naruto following suit.

"Do you have any brass knuckle? I want to buy a new set."

"I'm sure, but at the moment my store is limited with my own creations and at the moment there isn't many variations, I'm afraid. I'm not familiar with ninja weapon before this, you see. And for that I have to learn more first. Although I'm thinking of making a contract with a weapon company later, so I can fill my store with more selection of weapons. There is no possible way I can do it alone." A waitress came and handed the menu to his table, while glaring hotly at the squirming blonde kid. "Pick whatever you want, kid. Uhm…I choose grilled lamb and orange juice, please."

"The same, please," Naruto said dejectedly when he saw her glare.

"…Are you going to stay rooted in the spot or are you going to take up our orders?" Harry snapped, causing the waitress to jump and scrambled out of the way. "Geez, what's up with her?" Naruto shrugged in silence. Harry decided to leave him alone. "Asuma-san, can you tell me what are the popular weapons for the ninjas here?" Another waitress brought up a tray of team 10's orders.

Asuma answered his question as he ate his BBQ flavored tenderloin. Harry listened at him with rapt attention and wrote his advices in his notebook, while Naruto chatted with the genins. Ten minutes later their orders arrived. The same waitress slammed Naruto's food and almost go when Harry stopped her.

"Excuse me, miss, I think you get him the wrong order," he pointed at the Naruto's charcoal looking grilled lamb, while his was perfectly fine.

"No, I am not wrong. That's his," she smirked maliciously.

The wizard had had enough, as he picked up his knife and slammed it deeply to the table, causing her to jump. Team 10 had stopped eating as they watched the proceeding.

"Listen here, woman. Is that the way you treat your customer?" he hissed calmly. It would be better for her if he was shouting angrily, but this sent shivers to her spine, as she gulped down at the intense calm anger on his green eyes.

"Harry-san. It's okay, really," Naruto tried to placate his anger, but Harry would've none of it.

"Naruto, take my food, while I'll solve this _little_ problem," he growled.

"But—"

"Just.Do.It." he said. The blond nodded reluctantly. The other genins were wondering why she did that to Naruto and was starting to get curious.

'This is not good,' Asuma thought as he watched his students.

"And you _little girl_," he spat. "There is this something people called as etiquette. He is _the_ customer and you are _the_ waitress. See the problem here?" when she didn't answer, he exploded. "You're supposed to treat your customer _well_, you bitch," Ino gasped, as the waitress cowered. By now people were staring at the spectacle.

"But he's—" she tried to defend herself.

"I don't bloody care of your stupid excuse!" Harry cut her off.

"BUT HE'S A DEMON!" she shouted, causing the genins to blink in confusion. Asuma stood from his place. The woman would break the law anytime soon.

"A demon?" Harry repeated. Naruto was fidgeting on his seat. "Well, unless my eyes are deceiving me, he doesn't look remotely like a demon to me. He's a twelve year old kid! Beside if he is really a demon as you claim, he should've rip you to shreds just as you treated him like a trash! And I don't see him doing it! DO YOU!" Harry growled. "You know what I hate the most? It's not the crazy evil villain, but a hypocrite! Someone who think they're better than the others when they're actually not or someone who sit around on her ass, while hoping the others will make things right. If you're a demon, _girl_, I'm sure that you'll fit in nicely in the hell itself! You call him a demon? Why don't you look into the mirror! I'm sure you'll see the demon staring back at your face!" he gritted his teeth and clenched his hands. He would've punched her if she wasn't a girl. The other customers who were looking at Naruto with contempt before were fidgeting in their places when Harry said (more like shouted) it.

"What happens here?" a man with a nice business suit entered the fray. Apparently he was the owner of the place.

"_This_ woman here didn't know how to treat customer!" Harry informed.

The brown haired man pursed his lips when he saw Naruto, but stayed quiet, and then his eyes turned to the charcoal the woman called food. "I see. Excuse me, I have to talk with her," Harry nodded. Behind him Ino was trying to pull the knife imbedded on the table with difficulties. She almost flipped when she succeeded to pull it off.

The owner dragged her to the staff room.

"I know—hate him—uncalled for! Don't interrupt—is unprofessional beha—YOU'RE FIRED!" they could hear some parts of the conversation. The woman ran out of the room, crying, and slammed open the entrance. Naruto felt guilty, but Harry put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed it, although he wasn't looking at the blond.

The man came back to them. "We'll change it with the right order and I'll having some conversation with the cook later. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. I hope you don't think this bad of this place and will visit us again," the man bowed. "The boy will be treated like the other customers equally here. I'll make sure of that."

"Of course. I'm sure a little problem like this won't damage the reputation of this place," the owner sighed in relief, as Harry sat back on his seat and apparently decided not to sue him. He gestured another waitress to take care the charcoal food away and gave her a glare, as if daring her to do the same act that was done by the previous waitress. She gulped at the obvious threat and nodded.

"Well…that was interesting," Shikamaru quipped as he went back to his forgotten food. Chouji nodded in agreement.

"Just what did you do to her to make her so mad like that anyway, Naruto?" Ino interrogated.

"Um…Ino—" her sensei was trying to make her stop digging.

"How in the hell should I know? They were treating me like that as long as I remembered," Naruto snapped.

Harry sighed. "Just eat the food, kid. Or it will go cold soon," he ruffled his spiky hair, messing with it.

"HEY!" Naruto growled and tried to catch his hand, but Harry, who was chuckling at this, already took his hand away.

"You shouldn't let yourself being pushed around like that, you know," Harry commented, as narutp picked up his food.

"…I know," the older man snorted.

"If they push you around, push them back with twice the force," he advised. "If you let them trample over you once and you do nothing, they'll do it again, and again, until eventually you snap and probably slaughter them for that," he growled in annoyance. "Better avoid it in the first place."

"…You speak as if you experienced it yourself," the boy pointed out.

"Oh, I am," Harry exclaimed. "And no, you can't ask _them_ about it for they were no longer among the livings," the adult wizard muttered darkly and smirked maliciously when he thought about _them_.

"You kill them?" he croaked.

Harry stared at the boy and snorted. "Obviously." Naruto didn't say anything afterward, so Harry went back to chat with (now wary) Asuma. When they left the restaurant, team 10 was still there because they still had their normal everyday chat after dinner, leaving Ino trying to grill information about what had just happened from her poor teacher.

"Um…thanks," Harry stared at him. Naruto fidgeted, "You know? For defending me." No one had the guts to do that before, not even Iruka-sensei who preferred to avoid people like that when they were together. Iruka never stood up and cursing them like that. Sure he consoled him, but that was that. The only time he defended him was when he was bullied, other than that he let Naruto solve it alone. It was…enlightening for once. Although his hope was squashed when he realized that Harry didn't know that a demon was truly sealed inside him (which was of course not true, seeing that Harry already knew about it and even chatting with it).

"Think nothing of it, kid." Harry accompanied Naruto to his small rundown apartment and watched it with a frown when he saw the peeled paint and damaged apartment. There was a mess in the kitchen table, full with ramen cups, but other than that the place was clean. So clean it was there wasn't many furniture inside and even then the furniture there were either damaged or too old. "Sleep well," he ruffled Naruto's hair again, but this time he didn't fight it, only giving him a grateful look.

When the wizard exited the apartment, he gave one last look at it and shook his head. He wondered if Dobby would mind to take care of another people. (AN: I'm sure you already know where I'm going with this, so I might as well tell you now). He was sure the elf wouldn't mind at all. He grinned when he remembered of how enthusiastic his elf could be.

His mind also wondered to the girl that he had snapped at and growled, before it turned into a grin. "Causing two people to be fired in just my first 2 days here…not bad at all. Not bad at all," he chuckled. "The twins must be proud of me out there."

In his bedroom, Naruto was sleeping with a content smile.

TBC…

Well, this is it. Hopefully you'll like it. I was confused at first with how many the gems worth. Don't want to make Harry seems as having unreal luck, but I decided that gems that big plus other gems were rare and a collector would be willing to pay for them.

Personally I like how Harry defended Naruto. I didn't see sandaime or Iruka helped him like that in the manga or anime. They mostly were trying to lift up his spirit instead of defending him outright. Don't you think so? The ninjas is also given more hint of Harry's past life (the part where he kill people that annoyed him) and personality.

Of course I'm hoping for more reviews than usual, as I give you a longer chapter too. _Wink wink_ :D

HarbringerLady is now out. Wait _patiently_ for the next chapter, please.


	9. Chapter 9

Author's Note: Well, I did tell you to wait for it patiently, but it seems that you don't really need to wait longer. These days had been difficult for me because I snapped my ankles (yes, both of them) when I was walking leisurely. If this thing continues to happen (it had happened many times before this) I think I'll damage my legs, permanently. It was difficult to walk and since I usually propped my legs on the chair I sat on, it was painful when I use this pose when writing (damn habit).

I hadn't written anything for days because I had to finish my assignments, especially the scale model of a 3 stories building. I was deprived of sleep for 2 days, along with my group.

It is still a kind of filler chap (or for some of you _crap_), but it is still quite important.

**Chapter Nine**

Harry looked up to watch his would-be home closely. The building was still in great condition and wasn't as filthy as he thought, though it could be related to the fact the previous owner sold the land just 3 weeks ago.

The house was much bigger than he wanted to, but he wasn't about to complain, even if he didn't need this much space, considering the only ones who would live here would be he himself, Dobby, and Naruto, providing the boy agreed to move in here, of course.

The house was placed in the outskirt of the village, far from the crowds and yet was still close enough for him to walk to the town center. There was wooden fence surrounding the land where the house was placed. The building looked more like a complex, rather than normal resident. The house was a traditional one. It was mostly one story building, but a part of the house, placed in the back, was a two stories building. On the center was an abandoned garden, complete with the (currently dry) koi fish pond, at least it was, according to the agent's statements. Harry imagined it would be a lovely house if he managed to turn it back to its former glory. He wasn't comfortable with the idea of using unlocked sliding paper door though. It didn't look safe, since thief could easily penetrate the building.

Harry sighed, hoping that at least the house had indoor plumbing. He could solve the security problem later. Magic was really wonderful!

"Potter-san, we're ready to start the construction," Harry shifted his attention to the burly mustached man who approached him. "Just tell us where we have to build the workshop."

Harry nodded and led them to the backyard, 15 meters behind the house. Harry and the men had agreed to build a building consisted of a big workshop and 2 storage rooms: one for the materials, and the last one for the finished products. And when this was finished, the men would be hired for another job constructing a potion laboratory, not far from the workshop, and a greenhouse, not that they knew what he planned to do with those and they didn't really care as long as he paid them. He was building a greenhouse for his magical plants. He found out that there were many crests full with the frozen states of various magical plants ever known in the Earth (he thought they just contained games, like the one did that he sold to the jewelry store), some of them were even thought to be extinct, until he stumbled upon them anyway.

It was at this time of discovery Harry was frustrated that he didn't have any handy book nearby to tell him what he should do with them. He wasn't like Neville who was crazy about plants. He knew ways to kill and maim people, not ways to care for plants! And he only knew ridiculously amount of plants from the crests anyway. Still the thought that there would be potions to help him would greatly alleviate his worry.

Harry decided to explore his house, leaving the workers to do their job, when he heard someone called his name. Turning, he found the blonde boy who he was quite fond off running toward him. "Naruto," he greeted with a smile. "Where is your team?" he didn't see any of them behind the boy.

"Still in the bridge, waiting for Kakashi-sensei to arrive as usual," the boy bristled at the thought of his unpunctual teacher.

"Oh? Then why are you here?"

"Because I'm bored and if I start the mission now I'll have more spare time I can use for better things other than waiting for hours doing nothing," Naruto reasoned. "Woa, is this gonna be your home?" the boy inquired. Harry nodded. "Cool place," he commented as he followed his current client.

"Thanks," Harry opened the door, noticing that the paper in the wooden sliding door was ripped and needed to be replaced. He opened his notebook and wrote there that the papers needed to be replaced with a new one. As they explored the house, the black haired young man wrote on his book on what part of the house he should fix. "Oh man, don't tell me that this place has no electricity!" he groaned when he couldn't see any switch or lamp anywhere. He noted on his book. One and a half an hour later, they were finished checking up the building. "Well, at least they have indoor plumbing," Harry grumbled. Still there was no sign of the rest of team 7. Harry sighed. He needed to talk with Kakashi about the importance of time. "Naruto can you fetch me the cleaning tools in the horse cart?" the younger boy nodded and dashed away. Not long after the boy came back with 2 bunshins following him, bringing in the tools. Harry raised his eyebrow. "Naruto can your…bunshins able to be used for anything other than for fighting?"

"Huh? Sure, why?" the boy asked in confusion.

"Well, perhaps you can use them to help you fix the house. It will be faster that way," he pointed out.

Naruto blinked. "…You're right." He quickly created 10 more bunshins.

"Do you think you can handle it on your own? I need to go to the town." The young blond nodded. "If your team members arrived, give them this, will you?" he handed the list of things to fix to him. "You don't need to finish all of these in a day. I don't mind if it takes longer. Ok, see you later, Naruto." Harry walked away, leaving Naruto with his bunshins to start the mission.

Harry apparated soundlessly to the town. There were several people saw him apparating, but they didn't seem to mind this, because it was common in there to see ninjas doing that, but they didn't know that what Harry did wasn't the same method.

Asking people around him, he quickly found himself in the electricity company. The clerk there assured him that some people would be dispatched to his house that day in the afternoon. After doing the same with the water company Harry apparated back to his house with lunch for team 7. He didn't need to do the same for the construction workers, because he already paid for it in the front. When he walked inside the house, he noted that the rest of team 7 was already there.

"Harry-san," Sakura looked up from her job, sweeping the floor, and greeted him.

"Sakura, tell the others to stop whatever they're doing for lunch," he handed Sakura the food. "I have to check the backyard," the pink haired girl nodded.

When Harry arrived in the backyard, the workers were having lunch in the mowed grass (apparently done by Naruto because he saw 3 bunshins were plucking weeds around and another was mowing the grass). He noted that the workshop was almost done, with the exception of the roof and the floor finishing (hey, it was quite small, and they used wood instead of concrete that needed time to dry).

The young wizard approached a Naruto who was mowing the grass. "Naruto, it is lunch time. You can stop and wash your hands," the boy looked up from his job.

"Okay," he stood up and wiped the sweats on his forehead before blinking in confusion. "How do you know I'm the real Naruto?"

Harry shrugged. "Just a feeling," he smiled. The truth was that Harry recognized the presence of Kyuubi on his naval unlike his clones, but he wouldn't tell him that.

When the day was over he told Kakashi to be punctual or at least since he wasn't working (he said it with a sarcastic tone and a contending glare at the adult) his team should be here to do their mission instead of waiting for him to show up. The jounin merely raised his eyebrow, but he nodded nonetheless.

This time when the young man offered to take them for dinner no one refused it, including Kakashi, which actually made Harry wonder about it actually. Unfortunately for others, Harry had asked Naruto to tell him the place he'd like to have, and of course Naruto pointed Ichiraku for him.

"This place serves the best ramen in the world!" the other members of team 7 were rolling their eyes, while Harry blinked at their reaction. They met Iruka on their way there. "Iruka-sensei!" the young blond shouted.

"Naruto," the scarred face teacher said with a smile. He then noticed the presence of his other team members and Harry and gave them a brief polite nod. "Where're you going?"

"Ichiraku for dinner! Do you want to come with us, sensei? Uh, I mean," he looked at Harry anxiously when he remembered that it was Harry who would pay for the food.

"Well…I don't know. I still have papers to grade," the academy teacher rubbed the back of his head.

"Why don't you leave those papers for a moment and have a break? Come on, my treat," Harry invited him.

"But—"

"Consider it a celebratory of my moving here. Or if you think you owe me you can pay it by answering my questions," said the wizard.

Iruka looked at Naruto unsurely to see the boy nodding his head excitedly. The brown haired man sighed and nodded. "Alright. I'll join you," he replied. The group arrived at Ichiraku and immediately ordered ramen.

"No need to hold back, Naruto. I have more money than I can spend for generations anyway," the black haired man told him when he noticed that Naruto was holding back from ordering another bowl of ramen. As Naruto thanked him, he felt Kakashi shift. He already knew that Kakashi was watching him, trying to find information about him. He would feel better if the jounin would have just stood up and asked him directly instead of sneaking around like that, although that didn't mean that he would answer his question, of course.

It was as if the man didn't have anything else to do (which was probably true seeing the silver haired man using all his time to read the porn book).

Harry shook his head amusedly and snorted, earning him a questioning glance from Iruka. "It's nothing. Just remembering something funny," he assured him. Harry went back to his miso ramen and chatted with the chef there. He didn't feel any hostility directed at the young blond, in fact the man and his daughter seemed to be fond of Naruto, but judging by the amount of ramen Naruto could eat in a go he shouldn't be surprised. Naruto must be a regular customer here.

The food wasn't healthy though and if the boy ever moved in with him he'd make sure to change his eating habit. He was sure that Dobby would be up to the task.

"Ne, Harry-san, where did you come from?" Sakura asked him curiously. The others immediately paid attention.

"Hmm…Well I come from The Great Britain or England country."

"De Gureito Buritein? Engurando?" Harry chuckled when he heard her pronouncing the name with difficulty. Naruto was trying to pronounce the unfamiliar name with his tongue. "I have never heard it before. Where is this country located?" Inner Kakashi was urging Sakura to continue with the questions.

"Well I don't know the exact location from this continent, considering that I was washed up to the shore, but if you want to know the continent I was on was Europe."

"Yurope? They have weird names," she commented.

"Well of course. The languages we used are different from yours afterall."

"Languages as in more than 1 language?" Naruto piped in interestedly.

Harry nodded. "Europe consists of many countries and almost all of them are using different languages."

"Won't that be difficult for communicating?"

"I guess. But we have professional translator to do the job or we have to learn it on our own."

"Do the names have any meaning?" the pink haired girl remembered that Fire country and other countries meant nature elements.

"The names don't have any meaning as far as I know, but I might be wrong," the older man shrugged. "So what can you tell me about Konoha?" Kakashi thought that Harry was trying to change the subject.

It was Naruto who answered the question, but it was more about the people and the life he knew, so Iruka decided to help Harry learning about Konoha a bit and told him about the system of ninja rank. They spent 2 hours talking in the ramen stand before they went on their own way.

"Oh, and Sasuke, Sakura," he called the two. "I want you to work right away in the morning like Naruto just did. I don't think you'll need to wait Kakashi since you already know your mission…actually why are you waiting for him to get the mission from the mission center anyway? I'm sure you can do D-rank mission without him, or am I wrong?" he asked, after he was sure that Kakashi wasn't nearby. "Beside this way, it will be Kakashi who'll wait for you. Serves him right for his tardiness, I'd say!"

Sasuke didn't like being told to do something that Naruto had done, but agreed with the reasoning nonetheless. And it was actually a good idea to ditch Kakashi…made him sweat a little. "I'll be there at 8 in the morning," he said, and left as quickly.

"I'll do the same then, Harry-san," she bowed and ran to catch Sasuke.

"Uh, don't you think that Kakashi-sensei will be mad if he doesn't find any of us in the meeting ground?" the boy asked unsurely.

It was Iruka who replied with a scowl plastered on his face. "I think he deserves it. And it is due to happen to him anyway. Harry-san's idea is actually good, and I'm sure that Hokage himself will approve it. Still I don't understand why you and the others go there punctually when your teacher didn't do the same. You can use that time to train or do other things. What Kakashi-san had done was wasting your precious time for nothing. I think I'll have a chat with him about it."

"Thanks, Iruka-sensei," after thanking Harry, Naruto and Iruka walked away.

The next day was quite hectic, as Harry had to shift his time from checking his house, buying things, and making contracts with a metal provider and weapon company. His weapon stall was ready to be opened, although he chose not to until his house was ready for occupation. He had called Dobby that night and had a migraine after that, trying to prevent Dobby from killing himself for thinking he wasn't needed. Harry had to personally tell him that if he used Dobby to clean the house, people would start to wonder and he definitely didn't need their suspicion. The elf was calmed after Harry promised him that it would be Dobby and not anyone else who would be responsible for the house after Team 7 was finished with whatever they were doing to the house. His newly bought shirt was soaked by Dobby's tears after that (which brought another round of tears from Dobby after he knew he had soaked his master's clothes).

When Dobby heard about Harry's plan to invite Naruto joining the household, the elf was ecstatic, but Harry warned him that there was a possibility that Naruto would refuse the offer. The creature seemed a bit deflated after that.

Harry had to place Dobby on his hotel room or weapon shop when Team 7 was there. He was a bit anxious letting the elf went alone in a town full of ninjas like this but so far there was no ruckus among them about a green monster or anything so he assumed it was okay (whether the ninjas didn't feel him or Dobby was good enough at hiding he didn't know).

Harry also felt that there was someone watching him, but when he looked around the feeling gone and he felt that whoever it was watching him gone away. It made him edgy (and sometimes cranky). He was tempted to use legilimency scan around him just to catch the perpetrator.

"Is something wrong, Harry-san?" Naruto asked him. Both of them were bringing grocery in their hands. Since almost all parts of the house were finished, the black haired man decided to move out of the hotel and stayed in his house. Harry had asked Naruto to accompany him buying grocery, while the rest of the team continued with their job.

Harry put the grocery bags on the cart. "I feel that someone is watching me," he looked around, but once again the feeling disappeared, causing him to bristle. He had used legilimency to see the mind of the man beside him, when Naruto talked.

"Perhaps you have a stalker," he stated. "Sasuke-teme has many stalkers. Stupid bastard!" the boy grumbled.

"Why in the hell he has stalkers as in plural, and why do you sound jealous of him about it?" the older man blinked.

"Because he's so fucking popular just because he's the last of Uchiha clan!" Naruto barked, "Girls like him and they decide to stalk him."

"Well if having stalkers part of being popular, I definitely won't want to be popular," Harry said. Yes, he really didn't want to be popular. At least in this world there was no one who knew about his famousness (be it as The-Boy-Who-Lived, The Chosen One, The-Man-Who-Slayed, or as The Traitor)

"Eh, why?" the blond asked, not understand. "He gets many attentions," at this he was downcast. "Unlike me," he mumbled softly.

"So? Stalkers are annoying and are nuisances. I'm sure Sasuke's movement is restricted because his stalkers are watching his every movement. And having obsessed people after you are kinda…creepy. That's certainly not the attention I need. You're you, Naruto," Harry patted his head. "If people don't appreciate you for who you are, then you don't have to try making them like you. Sometimes it even makes them angrier of you. You already have people who like the real you. I think you should focus on them rather than trying to convince the ones who don't like you."

"But I don't want to give up! That's not my nindo!" defended Naruto.

"Who said anything about giving up?" he raised an eyebrow. "I only tell you not to bother with them. You can continue with your days like this and enjoy your life. Whether they accept you in the end or not isn't a problem. You _can't_ make everyone like you. There will always be people who hate you, be it because of your personalization, your family," here Harry was reminded of Snape, "Your life, your side, your action, your dream or other measly thing such as a simple conflict like accidental bumping on the road. There is no one who doesn't have any enemy. Humans' minds are…complicated. The slightest offence can make a man hates someone forever. You can't force them to like you, especially if you're acting like a fool to make them like you."

Naruto was staring at Harry silently.

"Listen. I think that if you continue with your way like this, you'll just end up tired yourself. Why bother with them if you can still enjoy your life without them," Harry himself didn't bother correcting the wizards' and witches' beliefs of him going dark after many of his friends died. It just didn't worth his attempt and time. If they wanted to think like that, they could go screw themselves. They needed him more than he needed them. "Don't throw away your life for meaningless things like that. You are already recognized by some people. You really should concentrate on your own life and those you hold dear. Some people can't be changed, no matter how hard you try," he paused. "What do you think?"

Naruto was quiet. There was a conflict on his eyes. "I-I don't know. I need to think about it first."

"What about this…you stay in the cart, guard it and think about what I said. I have to go to that store," he pointed at a houseware shop across them. "Beside, you don't need to answer it today. And it wasn't like you need to do what I said, it was just a suggestion."

"…Okay," he nodded impassively.

Harry shook his head with a sigh as he entered the store. The kid needed to get a life and think of his own future rather than being concerned of those jackasses. He was once like him too when he was young and didn't knew better, and in the end he realized it just didn't worth it. If he could, he wanted to open Naruto's eyes earlier and cast away his naivety before it hurt him. Such was the truth in the cruel world. He would be disappointed and heartbroken if he continued wasting his life for those unworthy of such attention.

When they rode back to his house, cart full of supplies, Naruto was still silent, contemplating it. His blue eyes watched the hateful glares sent on his way quietly, and this time instead of smiling like idiot he just continued to watch them with unreadable look. Apparently it unnerved them, and they looked away. Naruto blinked when he saw their reaction.

Later at night on his bed, Naruto was thinking about his dream (bordering on obsession) to be Hokage. Why did he want to be Hokage anyway? That was easy. He wanted recognition and appreciation from everyone on Konoha. To let them realize he wasn't the monster they thought he was. But he felt that Harry was right when he said that no matter how hard he tried, he wouldn't be able to change all of them.

Beside he needed people's recognitions and approvals first _before_ he could be a Hokage. And he knew deep down his heart that the old coots on the council wouldn't allow it and there would be many people opposing it.

To be Hokage, he needed to be strong first, but what did he need the strength for? To protect his precious persons, obviously. He wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice his life for them. But what about others? Did he really able to throw away his life for people who didn't appreciate him? Perhaps, but he doubted it. And there were many people like that in Konoha. And it was Hokage's duty to protect them.

He sighed and rubbed his head. He wondered what Harry was thinking right now. He remembered the faraway look on his emerald eyes when he talked to him that afternoon. It was as if he was speaking from experience.

But Naruto felt that if he gave up on his dream, it would be the end of his life. What should he do afterwards? He wouldn't have any purpose in life anymore. And the thought of it gave more shudders to him than the thought of being beaten by Konoha villagers.

The back of his palm covered his face from the light of his room. "I don't know what to do…Yondaime, you're the one who create this mess in the first place, you tell me," he muttered, asking for the guidance of his hero (and at the same time the one who destroyed his life and the one he hated the most occasionally).

Harry was right when he said that he would be tired. He was already starting to get tired of their bad treatment, of their scorns, of their hate, of being the scapegoat. He did nothing wrong, and it wasn't like he chose to be a demon vessel.

Stupid yondaime! Why did he pick him up and not the other babies?

Inside the cage, Kyuubi could hear Naruto's line of thought. **_Hu hu hu…it seems that that humaoid demon doesn't stay idle. This way, he won't feel any need to protect those pathetic insects. _**The fox demon didn't know that Harry didn't have any intention to help him, but Naruto. **_Perhaps…perhaps I'll even help the boy a bit if things go well further._**

**Harry's house**

On his bedroom, Harry was sitting on his futon he had bought today in the town center. He was practicing hiragana alphabets. After all he already knew how to speak, but he couldn't write yet. Thankfully Iruka saw the problem and helped him acquiring books to help him. Harry found that it was easier to memorize the alphabet if he wrote them down many times than just simply memorizing it by reading.

There was a loud 'crack' before a short green creature was revealed with a tray of snack and coffee on his hands, causing Harry to jump a bit. The elf put down the tray on the tatami floor beside his master's bed.

"Thank you, Dobby. You can rest now," Harry snatched the glass and sipped the warm coffee. The elf already knew the exact temperature his master liked.

"Dobby will do that."

"Oh, before you go. I want to tell you that I'll need you to check the weapons that will be delivered soon next morning. I'll put glamour on you, so the delivery man won't freak out. This is the list," The-Ex-Boy-Who-Lived (because he was no longer a boy) handed him a paper with Latin alphabets written there.

Harry was reminded that he really need to memorize hiragana, katakana, and kanji soon for business contracts and the likes, especially kanji.

The house elf bowed and vanished from the room, again with a loud sound.

Harry shook his head. The next time he met Dobby, he would ask the elf to not directly teleporting to his room, except for emergency. He didn't like it when people suddenly enter his private domain without so much warning.

At midnight, he decided to call it off and put the brush and ink bottle away from his bed. The room was still bare with not even a furniture inside. It would change tomorrow after the furniture was delivered. Laying on his futon, Harry pondered the way he had to approach Naruto with. There was no way he would say, 'Hi, I want to offer you to stay with me because I also host a demon like you and I think people like us should stay together. Oh and I come from different world. And this is Dobby, my house elf. So yes, you're not having delusions or something.'

Yes, there was no doubt it would go _well_.

Harry rolled his eyes at the sarcastic thought. Naruto didn't need to know that he was a demon vessel like him (albeit he chose the fate himself, unlike the helpless boy) at the moment. And he didn't want Naruto to think that he was nice to him only because they had similar fate or that he was trying to convert him into a human hater. But Naruto needed to know about Dobby's existence if he was to live with them. Well, he already knew about Dobby's existence…but he didn't know that he was connected with Harry or what he was (or that he wasn't hallucinating, Sakura and the others had drilled that he hallucinated into his brain). Of course there was a problem of keeping it a secret. If the boy refused his offer, Harry would be unable to change his memory due to Kyuubi's presence and that would probably cause a problem he didn't want to bear.

The black haired man drifted to Morpheus' arms with the silk-covered sword lay comfortably beside the futon, deciding to put off that problem, as he was too tired to care.

The next day, all of team 7 members, except Kakashi, was there at 8 o'clock and was ready for another work. They were told to fix the fence of the house and painted it fresh and to plant plants (be it trees or flowers) on the garden in the house center and on the front lawn. Harry had decided to restore the front lawn back to a respectable garden, while he could use the spacious backyard to host his training ground and other more…exotic plants (meaning herbs that he had gotten from Haku and also magical plants and perhaps even poisonous plants too). But those plants weren't priority, so he would put them off until he had the time.

Kakashi arrived at his house at 2 o'clock in the afternoon a bit miffed, especially when he saw his students were already there, doing their mission, not even looking up to acknowledge his presence.

"2 p.m., Kakashi-san? You are even later then yesterday," Harry accused mockingly. He could hear Naruto and Sakura snickered, while Sasuke snorted.

The jounin instructor glared at his supposed students. "Well, I was searching for my missing students, although it seems that they aren't exactly missing," he muttered.

Harry snorted. "I bet they were fed up waiting for you and decide to leave you behind. And I want to say that they're right to do that. Your students are almost finished, I expect it will be another hour or two before the mission is complete," Harry smacked the paper on his hand to the man's chest. "Have a nice day," he smirked cheekily before leaving the man alone who was gaping as he blinked.

**Sandaime's office**

"That man is ruining my team!" Kakashi slammed his hands on the table with a glower.

"Nah, I think it's just long overdue," Anko whispered to Ibiki who smirked as a reply. Asuma and Kurenai who were also there snorted.

"You bet it is," the head of interrogation didn't even attempt to tone down the volume of his voice, causing the usually composed (to the point of being annoying) masked jounin to turn his back and glare.

"Well, Kakashi, you're the one who suggested bringing him here. Beside there is no proof that he's ruining your team. And it your own fault for being so damn late, anyway," sandaime chuckled as he lit up his pipe.

"Right. Make this into Blame-Kakashi Day," he muttered in annoyance.

"Well, your team aside, I need you to tell me about what you learned about our current guest," the old leader went serious, causing the others to follow his lead. Kakashi even 'forgot' about his annoyance.

"Well, that guy is certainly…uh…unique?" he raised his eyebrow and made a face.

"…Unique?" the Third Hokage repeated, asking for more elaboration.

"Yes. I have told you about his ability to use…that wooden stick of his. He didn't use any chakra of those attacks. My eye—" he put a hand on his left eye which was covered by his hitae-ate. "—had proven it. And of course not to forget his power level when he went berserk at the same time with Naruto. And I still can't see a damn chakra being used there, unlike Naruto did," that caught the attention of the ninjas inside except for the Hokage who had read the detailed report. "The first time I met him, I was on edge constantly."

"And now?"

"I don't really feel it anymore…it is as if he has…mellowed out. Or perhaps because he had become more relaxed when he was with us. He's a stranger from a different distant land with different language and—I'm sure of it—custom. But he learned our way quickly. His weapon was strange too. It could emit thunder and according to Potter Harry himself, he was the only one who was able to use it."

"How does it perform, compared to raijin?" the lightning sword heirloom was missing after it was stolen by the traitor Aoi.

"I haven't seen raijin in action, so I don't really know. But his sword _is_ special. I remember that he didn't bring his sword with him on the bridge, but he had it after then. I guess that he could call his sword wherever it was. And from what I managed to uncover from him, his sword will only respond to—" Kakashi stopped short when he and the others felt an unfamiliar chakra signature heading to the office.

There was a knock on the door and when it was opened, a pale Hyuuga Hiashi entered the room. "Hiashi, is there something I can help you with?" Hokage frowned when he saw the confused frown on the leader of Hyuuga clan's face.

"It's about the man you told me about," he spoke.

"Potter Harry?" the white eyed man nodded. "What about him?"

"I was quite…curious about that man after the members I dispatched to watch him were all being found out. No, I don't mean he knew who exactly were watching him, but it seemed he could sense that he was watched and which direction it came from. So I decided to take a look. I managed to get…a look on his body, before I was sensed," _the_ Hyuuga Hiashi was found out? "That man…he didn't have an ounce of chakra at all."

"…"

"…"

"_What?_" That couldn't be possible! Every living creature needed chakra to live, even a tailed beast like Kyuubi! Unless their guest had the ability to confuse even the famed byakugan.

"He didn't have any chakra coil, much less a tenketsu. He's completely devoid of chakra," Hiashi murmured it to himself, as if he didn't believe it even after watching it by his own eyes.

"How can…he lives then?" Kurenai asked the question.

"Well, that's a good question. How?" the occupants on the room looked at each other.

**TBC…**

The next chapter is already finished even before this one 2 days ago. I'll upload it later (so I can get reviews for this chapter :D heh) There is no action for the next chapter, but the next one after that (chap 11) will be the start of chuunin exam. I think you've waited long enough.

So, the Hyuuga had scanned Harry and the Leaf found out Harry was devoid of chakra, something that was believed to be impossible. Even plants have chakra on them.

Plus, Kyuubi was thinking that Harry actually try to help him.


	10. Chapter 10

Author's Note: So, some people think that I'm pure evil for telling you that I've finished this chapter but wait until the reviews entered first and they thought that I was asking for more reviews. Actually that wasn't the problem. Sure I'd be happy to see more reviews, but I wasn't actually asking for you to review by blackmailing you or something. I didn't upload chapter 10, because I'd like to have reviews for chapter 9 too. If I uploaded them together, there was a big chance that chapter 9 wouldn't get the amount of reviews it should get if I uploaded it alone, because people would instead send review for chapter 10. And thus when I see the record of the reviews in my account, I'll wonder why chapter 9 gets so little reviews, compared to other chapters.

Okay, now that I've told you that, happy reading.

**Chapter Ten**

Naruto blearily opened his eyes. Groaning, he took the pillow under his head and shoved his head under it to cover his face from getting hit by morning sunlight. There was the sound of door being knocked and there was a slight ruffle and footstep.

"Naruto, wake up! Breakfast is ready!" a male voice told him.

"Gimme 5 more minutes…" he dozed off. Inside his mind, his messed mind was slowly tidying itself up. _Wait a minute! Breakfast? _Naruto blinked and quickly looked up, his elbows were supporting his body, as he looked around him with half-opened eyes. It wasn't his room for sure. One, the room was big—three times over his bedroom infact—with fresh unpeeled paint covered the wooden wall, unlike his. Two, the bed felt oh-so comfortable and big enough to fit 2 adults on it and still had more space. Three, there were expensive (or at least what looked like expensive, he didn't know for sure) furniture strewn around the room.

Now fully awake Naruto quickly darted out and reached the window in a hasty scramble, opening the blue curtain from which the sunlight peeked in.

Well, that did it. This wasn't his rundown apartment. The koi pond that greeted his sight confirmed it. There was a breeze ruffled his messy blonde hair, when the door of this room was opened. Naruto slowly turned around with a half opened mouth and disbelieved eyes.

"Are you okay?" the black haired figure leaning on the door frame asked him with a concerned green eyes.

A rush of yesterday's flashback flowed into his brain. Naruto opened his mouth like a fish outside water. "This…This isn't a dream?" he asked the older man in disbelief, afraid that yesterday's event was a mere dream.

"What do you think, kid? Come on, breakfast is ready. You can take a bath later or your food will be cold," Naruto didn't move from his spot. "Assuming you want to eat, of course," he added with a dramatic sigh of disappointment.

"NO! I-I mean, yeah, I'll eat it," the boy dashed past him. Chuckling, Harry closed the door and followed him downstairs.

Outside his room, yes the room was _his_, Naruto's nostril could smell the sweet scent of the food already. Rushing toward the dining room, he skidded over the empty table and let out a groan.

"No need to rush, Naruto. It isn't like the food will go anywhere else. It's still in the frying pan. Let me get it first," he admonished the sheepish looking boy who clutched his groaning stomach. "Help me fix the table, please." Three minutes later, the table was fixed. There were 2 plates full of pancakes and 3 bottles of different flavored jams on it, plus 2 glasses of milk and a bowl of apples.

"Mm…it smells good. What's it?" he drooled over the breakfast.

"It's pancake. You add the jam on it," the young wizard poured an unhealthy dose of strawberry jam, a product of being deprived of sweet and other decent food on his childhood by his now (thankfully and satisfyingly) dead relatives, and took a satisfied bite. It had been so long since he had eaten any pancake. Naruto gulped with a drool. "Aren't you gonna eat yours?"

The blond blinked. "Uh yeah, sure," he grabbed a different jam bottle and poured it into his pancake.

Five minutes later, the pancakes on Naruto's plates were already vanished and the boy patted his belly with a satisfied smile. Harry could only raise his eyebrow when he watched his own 1/4th eaten share and then at Naruto's empty one. "Do you like it?"

"Hell, yeah. It is really good! I have never eaten something like that before!"

"Well that's great. I'll make more tomorrow. I'm sure that eating ramen everyday, no matter how much you like it, isn't healthy (as healthy as a pancake full of jam everyday). And speaking of health, now that you live with me, I'll make sure you eat other things other than ramen," the blond opened his mouth to argue, before he thought the better of it and nodded quietly.

Inside Naruto was a bit relieved. Though it was true that he liked ramen, he was seriously starting to hate the food for eating the same thing (no matter how many different flavors he could eat) every time.

"Well, you better take a bath and change. It's 8 in the morni—"

"EIGHT?" Naruto shrieked. "Shit, I'm late for the meeting!" he scrambled out of his seat.

"Relax, kid. It isn't like your teacher will be there in time, anyway. So you have free time to do other things before you go to the bridge," a small green creature walked to the table, earning Naruto's shock (who had forgotten about the elf's existence until that time), and clicked his fingers with a loud snap. The next second the dirty dishes were being cleared up (although Harry still had his).

"Would Naruto-san like Dobby to make a boxed lunch for the training session?" the big eyed creature pleaded miserably, although for unknown reason, Naruto deducted that it wasn't because the elf didn't like to make the lunch for him, but because Harry was the one who made the breakfast.

"Um, sure…Dobby," he added his name carefully, as if reminding himself of the name of the elf.

"Dobby will do that," the house elf said enthusiastically.

"That…erufu-erfu-son of a!" the Kyuubi vessel still had difficulty pronouncing the term 'elf'.

"It's _elf_," the green eyed man smirked when Naruto scowled.

"Fine. That erf—Dobby sure sounded really enthusiastic over making lunch of all things," he gave up with the name, telling himself that he would be able to pronounce it sooner or later.

"Well, he _is_ a house elf. They're supposed to like serving their master."

"And that's the weird thing! I don't get it!" he threw his hands to the air. "Why would they like to serve someone anyway? Won't it be better for them to be—oh I don't know—free?" Harry chuckled before he quickly sobered up because he remembered about Hermione.

"Dunno. Why don't you ask Dobby? Mind you that Dobby is considered different by his own kind. They said that he's a no good elf who wants freedom too much," Naruto's jaw dropped. If the amiable want-to-serve-my-master elf was considered too free by his own kind, he didn't know how the other elves took it to the extreme.

"Nah, I don't want to offend him. And it isn't like it's my business anyway."

Harry snorted. "Well then, you should take a bath then, rather than doing nothing," he took the last bite of his breakfast and savored the jam. "Man, this is sooo good," Naruto stared at him as if he had grown 2 heads. He had never seen Harry acted like this before. Well, told him about how much he knew of the older man.

"…I'll go back to my room," he took off without waiting a reply.

On his way back to his room, Naruto clearly remembered yesterday's event.

**Flashback**

The blonde boy saw Harry approached him. His face looked serious and yet Naruto could detect nervousness from his movement.

"Umm Naruto, can I talk to you for a second?" Naruto sat on his on the chair of his kitchen, the milk bottle on his hand was forgotten.

"Sure," he put the milk on the table and waited for the dark haired boy to talk.

"Remember our time in Wave, when you're spouting about seeing green alien creature?"

"Yes," Naruto frowned. "But the others told me that I was hallucinating or thinking that my dream was real. And since I saw my team in my so-called dream and then they denied it, I guessed that perhaps they were right. What about it?"

"What if I tell you that you're not hallucinating nor dreaming?" Harry said it with a straight face.

Naruto blinked in incomprehension. Did Harry say what he thought he said? "Excuse me, _what_?" he stressed on the word 'what'.

"That green creature you saw in Wave…you were not hallucinating nor there was something wrong with your mind."

"…I was not?" Harry nodded. "But the others—"

"I erased their memory," he explained easily as if discussing weather with normal folk.

"…You erased their memores," the blond repeated. The black haired wizard nodded once again, his face was still unreadable and his nervousness was gone. "If you…erased their memories, why not mine? Why did _you_ do that? And much more importantly, what the hell exactly is _that _thing?"

"Well, I did _try_ to erase yours, twice even, but it didn't work. Weird though, because you were the first one to do that," Naruto had a feeling that it had something to do with the fox inside him. He unconsciously fidgeted on his spot. "And that creature is a house elf."

"A hausu what?'

Harry ignored the question. "As to why I bothered doing that, it's because he's mine."

"That hausu-whatever it is-is yours?" he carefully asked.

"Uhum," the man he had come to respect nodded with a smile. "His name is Dobby, one of my _house _elves."

"_One_ of yours?" Naruto asked, horrified at the thought of small green monsters running rampant around Konoha. "What the hell is a hausu erufu? Is it a demon?"

"It is _house elf_. Housefrom the word 'uchi' which means house in Japanese, while elfis…uh, I don't think there's a translation of that word in Japanese. And no, it isn't a demon. Though his appearance resembles that of a monster ("You get that right!"), he is definitely _not_ a monster nor demon."

"Then what is he?" _Because he looked like a demon to me. _

"Just a different species who wants to serve human," Naruto's eyes told him he didn't believe it. "Hey, I mean it you know. All things aside, you can think of him as my servant."

"Alright, so Dobbi (Dobby) is your servant and he is from different species. Anything else you might want to add? Wait, wait, wait, there aren't any more of his kind here, right?" he couldn't imagine the ruckus these creatures would inflict upon Konoha.

Harry thought Naruto seemed to be able to handle the soundly ridiculous information he'd given him much better than he thought he would be. The boy didn't shout, scream, run, or proclaim that he should be sent to the mental asylum. So far, so good.

"No, I'm sure there aren't more of them here," Naruto sighed in relief. "I'm not familiar with this area, it seems that I'm farther away from my homeland than I first thought."

_No kidding_. Naruto rolled his eyes inwardly. The black haired young man's perplexity when it came to the language and custom the first time he met him wasn't easy to be missed, even though the older teen tried to cover it. "I know. We've established that fact already in Wave." Not to mention the fact that there was no report about anything about that green creature. He concluded that there was no _hausu erufu_ in this continent.

"Yes, I believe we had done that."

"Why did you tell me about this? I've already thought that Dobbi was my figment of imagination. Wouldn't it be better if you kept quiet?"

"Uh, it has something to do with my purpose of this conversation. Well…" Harry suddenly looked anxious again. "Would you like to…stay with us?"

Naruto whipped his head so fast it almost broke. "_What_?"

"Would you like to—you know, move into my house and stay with Dobby and I there?"

"I-I-Why?"

"Why what?"

"You know what I'm talking about. Enlighten me!"

"Well, perhaps. It's not pity, if that's what you think," Naruto blinked.

_How in the hell he knows what I'm thinking? _

"About the reasons…well, you know that the house I bought is too big for just 2 persons, don't you?" Naruto knew that that wasn't the real reason. "…And you kinda remind me of my younger days."

_I reminded him of his younger days?_ "You spoke of it as if you're older than fifty," he joked.

"That's beside the point. And I'm still 19 almost 20 years old, so I can't be placed into the old categorization yet," Harry rolled his eyes. Couldn't he take it more seriously or something?

"In what way I remind you of your _younger days_?" he asked curiously.

"Well, we're both orphans," Naruto stiffened. He certainly didn't need to be reminded od that fact "And although I had relatives, they hated me and in turn caused the people to think I was delinquent," Harry chuckled as he remembered it. "I was considered as _The_ Freak and no one wanted to be my friends," Naruto wondered how he could speak of it with a smile, as if it was funny. "I was always wishing, hoping that my life would get better, although my wishes were repeatedly crushed, I couldn't help, but done that again and again. And…in a way my life _did_ get better," Harry said wistfully, remembering his days in Hogwarts with his friends around him. "And then my hope was crushed once again, and that time it was completely crushed I felt like the world had died with it, just like that," he didn't elaborate what happened, but Naruto knew that it was horrible. "Sorry, I can't help but get cynical as time goes on," he took a deep breath.

Harry continued, "When I was young, my friend, _Hermione_-" he said the name hoarsely, the light on his eyes dimmed, "-Told me that I have this…hero complex, trying to help others without having a regard on my own safety and careless beyond belief," he chuckled wryly and then glanced at Naruto's blue eyes. "My godfather died because of my carelessness," Harry clenched his fingers. Naruto was reminded that Iruka also _almost_ died because of him, because he didn't think twice about Mizuki's offer. And although it ended happily, it could have ended badly. The blond felt his heart froze at the memory of Iruka's pained face when a giant shuriken imbedded on his back, the young teacher told him to escape.

"At first, I felt invincible when I had passed other dangerous events that had happened before. And then, just like that, Sirius was killed by a moment of carelessness, my carelessness and his own too, I guess," he remembered Sirius' wide eyes when Bellatrix was able to drive him toward the veil. "I was reminded that I could also easily die, that my enemy is much stronger than me. I underestimated him, and I paid it with a price. After that I started to train seriously, but by then it was already too late. My teacher had sheltered me, and thus I wasn't prepared. I had myself to be blamed," Harry blinked, as if he had just remembered what he was doing. "Sorry. I guess that I'm blabbing. It doesn't have anything to do with our conversation," he coughed sheepishly. Anyway Dobby would be happy to have another people to serve. It is kind of refreshing to have someone else to serve you instead of the other way around for once, you know," he joked.

"I'll do it."

"Of course I won't force y—What?" Harry turned and stared at him in disbelief at the casual answer.

"I'll move into your house. I accept the offer," Naruto almost laughed at the dumbfounded expression etched on his new host/landlord's face.

"S-sure. Welcome, to the family, kid!" Harry said with a happy smile.

"Yeah…to the _family_," Naruto wanted to have a family and wondered if he would actually find a family within Harry. Then he blinked, "Hey, if both of us are orphans, why don't you ask Sasuke?"

Harry stared at him as if he had grown 2 heads. "Oh, come on! Can you imagine it? Instead of talking, we'd be having a staring contest all day! It'd be like talking to a statue," Naruto laughed, because Harry was right, he couldn't imagine that. Harry was happy, the weight on his heart was lifted.

"Then can I ask you how exactly you erase my team's memories?"

The wizard laughed. "Now, now, that is a S.E.C.R.E.T." Naruto pouted and scowled at the older teen. "Come on, let's start packing up!"

"Wait, wait, you mean _now_?"

"Of course it is. Watch carefully, because I'll make you widen your eyes," flicking his wand, Harry easily shrunk all the things inside the kitchen, including Naruto's milk bottle.

True to what he said, Naruto did widen his eyes. "WHAT THE FUCK?" he also swore though. Then he turned toward him, "How in the hell—"

"Uh-uh," the last living Potter waved his finger. "That's also a secret. Perhaps I'll tell you when you're older," he winked and laughed, leaving Naruto in the kitchen with his jaw dropped to the floor.

"Um…you do know that the furniture aren't mine, right?' was the only thing the Kyuubi vessel managed to say, as he watched the shrunken kitchen table and cupboard.

"Uh, oops?" Harry's head peeked out from the door.

**End Flashback!**

Yes, he still remembered it as clear as the day. Naruto chuckled and entered his bathroom.

**The Meeting Point**

Sakura was drumming her fingers on the tree trunk below her impatiently. First it was Kakashi who was late, but now Naruto hadn't arrived yet too! Clutching her hand and gritting her teeth, she hit the trunk angrily, creating a considerable dent there.

"AIEE! It's fucking hurts!" she clutched her knuckles in pain.

Sasuke was watching the dent she created in silence. There was a frown marring his face.

"Hiya, guys!" their blonde teammate waved his hand, as he walked toward them. Sasuke's brain immediately assessed that there were some things different with his teammate. Clothes? Nah, he was still wearing the horrid orange jacket and pants. "Good morning, Sakura-chan! Yo, Sasuke-teme!" the boy sounded…oddly cheerful. He was still abnormally cheerful (to the point of grating his nerves), but he seemed…different. For once, although the boy was energetic, he didn't raise his voice or shout. Good morning my ass! YOU'RE LATE! I'm so going to kill you!" Sakura didn't seem to notice this though.

"Hey, what had crawled inside your ass and died?" the pink haired girl stopped short. The heir of Uchiha clan raised his eyebrow.

"Excuse me, say it again?"

"I said, what had crawled inside your ass and died?" the blond reprimanded her, as if she was lower than he. Sakura's jaw dropped.

Did the boy become sarcastic suddenly over a night? And did he just defy the girl he declared as his love interest openly? There was something definitely wrong with the picture here.

Sakura was still gaping like a fish. "Who are you?"

"Do you have a problem with your eyes or something? Unless you can't see, I am Uzumaki Naruto, your blonde teammate, the (cough) dead last, dobe, and overall shinobi extraordinaire."

"No, you're not," she refused to believe it. "The real Naruto will not do—do _that_!" she pointed accusingly.

The boy suddenly laughed. "Oh, come on! You don't actually believe that I'll let you walk over me forever, do you?" from the expression on her eyes Naruto could see that she actually believed that. "Oh, nevermind. Why are you getting angry at me, anyway? It isn't like Kakashi-sensei has arrived," Naruto pointed out. "And didn't we have made an unofficial decision to not wait for him? Well I have to bid you further adieu!" he left Sakura and chose other place to wait for Kakashi. Sakura's mind was still frozen by the revelation and Sasuke was looking at both of them in confusion.

Harry who was checking up for his new tenant was smiling. He realized that Naruto had taken his words to heart, and although he didn't like the fact that he alienated his friends with his act, he really hoped that with this, his teammates wouldn't look at him as if he was a trash or mere nuisance anymore.

Harry quickly apparated from his spot, right before Kakashi arrived.

The silver haired jounin noticed that Sasuke was looking at his teammates oddly, while Sakura who still opened her mouth was frozen on her place, and Naruto was leaning on a tree peacefully as if he had no care of the world. Sakura was still too shocked to shout at him angrily, while Naruto simply opened one of his eyes before he closed it again.

"Did I miss something?" No one was bothered to answer him.

**Later at home—which is Harry's house**

Naruto was in the front door, shuffling his feet nervously. "Uh, let's just get it done," he opened the door. "I'm hom-HUWAAH" he shouted in surprise when Dobby appeared out of thin air with loud crack.

"Welcome home, Naruto-san," the elf bowed low and immediately noticed that Naruto was on the floor. "Are you okay, sir?" the elf spoke in perfect Japanese, as perfect as Harry who had given him a crash course via legilimency anyway.

"Yea-yes, I am okay, just don't surprise me like that again, please," he stood up shakily. Dobby perhaps didn't realize this, but the sight of him appearing out of nowhere would be able to give a seasoned shinobi the fright of his live, thinking that he was a demon with his appearance.

"Dobby is sorry, sir. Dobby will remember not to do it again," the he-elf apologized.

'Like I said, I'm okay. Where's Harry-niisan?"

"He's in the town, speaking with a clerk from the weapon company he made a contract with."

"Oh. I'm going to train then," he informed the green creature. Naruto walked toward his room upstairs, passing through the corridor with wooden floors and entered the not-so traditional Japanese house. He blinked when he saw the mess he created of his bed was gone. It was neat unlike this morning after he woke up and he saw that his once empty shelves were filled with some books and scrolls. Opening one of them, he read that it was a book of how to survive in the wild, while another scroll was about meditation to calm the mind. He blinked and read the other literatures' titles, noticing that they had something to do with ninja's life, no matter how indirectly it seemed, such as techniques to hunt rabbit or other animals or how to find way back to civilization when someone got lost in the wilderness.

Putting those back on the shelves, Naruto turned and noticed the sets of weapons placed neatly on the table. There were kunais and shurikens of various sizes and shapes, along with 2 rolls of B and C grade exploding tags, a sharp kodachi with—strangely—black blade complete with its sheath, and a note.

_Think you'll need these. I created all of them with the exception of the paper tags, bought them from another weapon shop (who didn't know that I'll be a rival soon). I have adjusted the kodachi for you, so it will be perfect for your grip, balance, etc. You can use them for training or whatsoever, but don't use the exploding tags in the house, because if you burn down the house, I'll hold you responsible for it. _Naruto felt as if Harry was winking when he read it. _Have fun with them, kid. Oh, and I also bought a couple of books and scrolls. I don't actually understand all of them because of those annoying kanji alphabets, but the shopkeeper recommended the books, saying that even a novice would have no trouble learning the books and scrolls. Had half of the mind to knock him out for that. So what if I don't understand them? They should've used hiragana above the kanji alphabet! Oh well, nevermind about that. I don't think the man even knew I have just learned hiragana and katakana. _

_Since you have no meeting with your team tomorrow, I'll bring you with me tomorrow to buy new wardrobes (for both of us, the people were looking at me strangely when I walked around with the Wave clothes, and you, my dear little brother—_Naruto's heart soared when Harry wrote that—_have worse fashion sense than me (and Herumione_ (at least that's what I think her name is in katakana)_, my friend, did say that I have the worst tack when it came to fashion), which was unacceptable. Okay, so I see ninjas around here used the same clothes over and over again for days (or did they have a set of the same clothes for a year supply?) which make me wonder if these people (including you) even know that there is another clothe other than the one they use everyday actually). We'll speak about this again when I came home at night, probably around dinner. _

_If you want to use the horses (they're on the stable) to go somewhere feel free to do so. But after you're done with them, put them back on the stable. _

_As per our agreement, your chore today is to…create a training ground or something in the back yard. Make sure they are far enough from the workshop, the lab, or green house (and the stable). I would've given you a daily chore like cleaning the house or something, but Dobby bawled his eyes out when I told him about this, seemed that he didn't want you to steal his job. Heh. That being told, I will give you a chore for outside task, since no one is supposed to know about Dobby (who he is and especially what he is). I gave the list of the grocery today to Dobby, so ask him. If you're afraid of being thrown out or being treated horribly (just like what happened in that restaurant days ago and some other shops, we need to talk about this too later—_Naruto was filled with dread. He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to remember about it, and he certainly afraid of telling Harry about the demon inside him)_ you can just use that jutsu, what is it again? Henge? To make sure they don't recognize you. I have given the money to Dobby too. If you need something, just tell Dobby about it. No need to be shy. _

_See you tonight, kid. _

_Potter Harry_

Naruto noticed that there was a considerable improvement to Harry's writing. At least Harry's writing could be read by other party unlike his chicken crawls.

The blonde haired kid sank on his comfy sofa and looked around _his_ room. He still couldn't believe that his former client asked him to stay with him on his house, giving him everything he needed without blinking of how much money he had given out for him. He was still uncomfortable of letting others, especially someone he hadn't known for long, helping him to this extent. Sure the Hokage had given him his monthly allowance and money to buy his necessities (which could only be used in the stores that wouldn't thrown him out or gave him bad merchandise), but that was it. He was used to care for his own life. And now _BAM_ suddenly someone offered him a shelter, a home with comfortable bed, warm (and definitely healthier) food, and other necessities without much in return. It felt almost like freeloading.

Naruto quickly shook that thought away from his mind when he started to get uncomfortable.

Harry had trusted him of all people, about his secrets. About Dobby, his unique ability (though he was still tight-lip about what exactly he could do with his ability) and that he was a man from far continent far enough to not understand the meaning of shinobi, stranded here without any choice. He still thought that Harry had other secrets than he let on, but he knew that every man was privileged to have a secret on their own and Harry didn't even deny that there were things he didn't told him, beside it wasn't as if he had told him about the fox demon inside him _yet._

He also didn't know exactly why Harry asked him to move in with him. He was afraid that it was a pity at first, but then realized it wasn't the case. The man seemed to know what it was like being scorned by others and if he was right, judging by his faraway looks at times, it seemed that he had a life mirroring his own, or at least similar to his own. He was comfortable with Harry (once he had come past the odd feeling on his belly caused by his tenant) and he felt safe around him. But the thing to finalize his decision to accept the offer was that he could see…loneliness on Harry's intense emerald green eyes once when he lowered his guard and allowed his real emotion to play on his face. The very same emotion he could see every time he found himself in front of the mirror.

That was when he decided to agree with the offer and hoped that he would be able to mend whatever thing that had broken him, that had caused the pain and loneliness on his eyes. He wanted to help the man that had defended him in public, who had given him shelter and had also given him valuable advices.

The older teen had helped him, and thus he was bound to help him back. It was just fair and even if he wasn't bound to do that, he knew it was the right thing to do. He knew what it was like to be alone and he wondered if they could be together, as a family, so they wouldn't be alone anymore.

Naruto was pushed out of his wandering mind when he remembered that he hadn't told Hokage and Iruka and his team yet that he had moved out.

Damn.

And Iruka told him that he'd come around after he was finished with his class. He had forgotten about that in the midst of moving out.

Double damn.

It was already an hour after his class was finished and Iruka had a spare key to his apartment. No wonder that his former teacher would be freaked out by now after he saw that his apartment was devoid of his presence.

Triple damn.

"SHIT!" Naruto jumped from his seat and scrambled out of his room hastily. His steps didn't really create loud sound, as he was a ninja who was used to walk more silent than normal people, but his abrupt and unexpected landing downstairs on his chest after a rather spectacular trip and fall _did _create the unnecessary loud noise. "OOFF!" the air on his lung was pushed out involuntarily. Disoriented and his brain scrambled by the shock of hard landing, Naruto did a perfect impersonation of a fish out of water when he tried to stand up, not knowing that he was watched by Dobby who had come to see the source of the noise (and the local earthquake) to find that the new tenant of the house was 'swimming' on the floor (1). It was a minute later that Naruto had the strength and enough motoric nerves control to stand up and ran out of the house.

Dobby was still staring at the spot right in front of the stairs.

"Dobby will never understand why humans do what they do," the elf shook his head and went back to his job, watering the newly planted plants in the garden.

**Meanwhile in Hokage's Tower**

Sandaime was stamping his paperwork unenthusiastically when someone barged in, causing the door to his office to loose its hinges. It was hanging on the wall dangerously, as if a small fly passing it would be able to break it further. The perpetrator was opening his mouth, ready to say something when it was interrupted by the loud cracking sound, as the door eventually landed on the floor, hard.

"Uh…umm…" the black haired man looked at it nervously before his eyes turned back to the shocked Hokage. His assistants immediately appeared when they heard the sound, a kunai was on their hand, as they were ready to defend their leader, only to find that the one they thought trying to kill their beloved Hokage was Iruka who was standing there, gaping like a fish as he stared at the carnage of the door.

"…What can I help you, Iruka?" Sarutobi eventually spoke, eyes still gazing at both Iruka and the hole where his office door once stood proudly (although it now laid in the floor like a messed heap). He didn't know that the kind academy teacher had a Tsunade-like strength.

The teacher was snapped out of his shock when he heard his question. "I COULDN'T FIND NARUTO!" his assistants were looking at each other before their incredulous gaze landed on the apparently mental unbalanced Iruka.

"You…couldn't find Naruto?" the old man repeated. Iruka nodded furiously.

"Yes, I have told Naruto I was coming there after my class, but he wasn't there!" he waved his hands, as if to emphasize what he meant.

"Naruto was scheduled to have a meeting with his team today, so perhaps he was still with Kakashi."

"NO, NO! I don't mean that! It has happened before, so I won't worry if he is late or something."

"Then what?" the Third was confused.

"I went to his apartment and entered it—you know that I have the spare key, right?" Hokage nodded slowly, still didn't understand where he was going. "And I couldn't find anything there! Oh, there are some furniture and they were still in place, but-but I couldn't find any sign of Naruto!" he knew he was blabbing.

"…Huh?" the three other ninjas on the office asked stupidly at the same time.

"It was empty! No ramen ("Perhaps he is out of them and hasn't bought more."), no trashes ("Perhaps he is cleaning his apartment…for once?"), no plants ("Perhaps he eventually is bored with them and throws them out?"), no rotten milks or eggs ("…that is a good news…isn't it?" one of the assistants whispered confusedly to the other who nodded)," Iruka didn't seem to realize the others were replying his words at all, as he continued to blab. "—No clothes in the wardrobe—"

"Perhaps he puts them on the laund—wait, wait, wait! WHAT?" the Hokage was shouting at the last part. There was something ridiculously fishy with the report.

"I mean, there is only furniture there, but there's no sign that someone lived there, much less Naruto!" Iruka sniffed. "Naruto is gone!" he bawled and landed on his knees as they gave out.

Hokage immediately stood, a frown marred his old face as he gazed at his assistant. "Get me the ANBUs!"

"Yes, sir!" Kotetsu (if I'm not wrong) turned around when something bumped his stomach. His gaze went down to find a mop of blonde hair there.

"Ouch! Hey, watch out, will you!" the owner of said blonde hair looked up. An annoyed thinned lips and narrowed blue eyes faced him. The whisker mark on his cheek told him the identity of the owner. "Hey, hey, what had happened? It looked as if a tornado had come to give you a personal visit!"

Kotetsu and his partner twitched at the remark. "…I found the culprit, Hokage-sama."

"Hey, hey, what culprit! I didn't do anything…these days anyway! I'm perfectly well-behaved!" Naruto cried out, feeling offended, causing the two nins to snort in disbelief. He pushed the older-nin away and entered the office via the (ahem) hole and stopped short when he saw Iruka who he was trying to find was staring wide eyed at him in shock. There was evidence that he almost cried. "Er…well…" he shuffled nervously on his spot. "Except that I had-er-forgotten to tell you…something, I guess," he tried to laugh like he usually did, but it ended pathetically. He could feel the stern glare directed at him from the old man behind the table. _Well, shit!_

"So," the Hokage started. "Care to explain why Iruka said that he found nothing on your apartment? Not your…ramen, plants, thrashes, rotten milk and eggs, or clothes?"

"Er…I moved out?" he offered with a weak grin. Sarutobi glared further. "And uh I forgot to tell you about it?"

"You moved out?" he repeated. The kid nodded stiffly. _Okaaayyy…_

"NARUTOOOO!" Iruka launched himself at the kid whose eyes went wide as he was being crushed alive. "DO YOU KNOW HOW WORRIED I AM!"

Naruto wheezed. "I-Iruka-sensei, you're _crushing_ me," he tried to get out of his deadly hug, but it was to no avail, as the young teacher continued to blab. Naruto could hear (and _feel_) one of his ribs broke down.

"Naruto, how can you move out when—" _when the only place that won't throw you out was your apartment?_ Needless to say that Hokage stopped short before he could utter that. Was that the only place that wouldn't throw him out? And if he recalled correctly it was because he threatened the owner of said apartment to accept him, unless he wanted to be booted out of Konoha. Was he truly blind? Or was he just trying to forget that his beloved Konoha was openly hostile with the savior of Konoha? "Where did you go anyway?" Sarutobi felt an enormous headache was looming dangerously close from the gate of his tired mind. He needed a break.

"Harry-niisan's place!" he added with a troubled smile that was caused by having his air circulation cut, courtesy of one of his precious persons (who was currently killing him slowly—and painfully!), causing Hokage to frown. Since when did Naruto call him Harry-niisan? "You know—the blacksmith that you praisssed" he wheezed. "A little help, pliiizzzzz" the two ninjas decided that he deserved their pity. A death because of a 'simple' hug was undignified for a ninja's death to be afterall. They pried Iruka away from Naruto who was looking at them as if they were a God. It was as hard as prying a faithful dog away from its master after it hadn't seen him for years. Thank god that Iruka still remembered that licking (or slobbering) was inappropriate. And the assistants felt immense relief when Iruka didn't bite them.

"…You move into his house?" Hokage repeated. Did he or did he really feel a case of Déjà vu here? Because he was tired of repeating what others said when he didn't understand them or need their confirmation.

"Oh, yeah!" he shouted enthusiastically, still eyeing Iruka warily who apparently calmed enough to not attach himself like a puppy. "I have this really big bedroom! The bed is comfortable and everything there is new! And oh-oh I even have this indoor bathroom!"

Seeing his happiness and childlike act, sandaime didn't have the heart to tell him that they still didn't trust Harry, or that they were tailing him. _Damn conscience! _Not that he was planning to tell the unfortunate boy that he suspected the blacksmith as another jinchuuriki or that the man didn't even have a chakra coil. "That's…" he tried to find the fright word. "-Good then," and it seemed Naruto didn't notice his hesitation.

On the other hand, he could dig some information about the mysterious man without being obvious, _if_ he played the right card with the oblivious boy.

"So, how's your new house?" he tried to not being so obvious, asking about Potter Harry immediately.

Naruto grinned his foxy smile and started to talk like a kid after being bribed with candies.

During the talk, one small question slowly and eventually wormed into sandaime's mind.

How in the hell Naruto moved his things without someone know about it? His apartment was close to the town center after all.

TBC…

Give me reviews, or I'll haunt you in your nightmare (just kidding! Or perhaps not)

It had happened to me once, when I was in senior high school (it was holiday and I was back in my hometown). I tried to outrun my fast-runner dog to close the damn fence gate, so he couldn't escape, only to trip and fall to the hard pavement. My sis (who was in front of me on the motorcycle, waiting for me) didn't realize that I fell (not even a meter behind her and I was sure that I made loud sound when I fell). I was too disoriented to think straight and I was sure that I was in the ground for more than a minute, acting like a fish out of water as I tried to stand up, only my body didn't respond at all. My dog (who I thought was supposed to escape) came and nudged me with his snout (how could I tell this when I was too disoriented? The fact that I felt his wet nose and he was in front of my face, slobbering me with his wet doggy tongue ON _my_ face). I thought that my sister was thinking where I was so she turned around and saw me in the ground, laying there with my arms moving as if I was swimming.

Do you know what she said? "Kowe iki lagek ngapa toh ning ngisor kono?" in (Central) Javanese dialect, which could be translated in English as "Just what are you doing down there?" and she said it with a straight face! I mean, could you believe her? She didn't try to help me and just staring at me like that. Oh, I tried to say something, but my mouth didn't want to respond. After a moment I decided to just lay there and gathered my strength. My sister decided to help me (at last) but the only thing she did was dragging me by my hands. Eventually I could stand up and told her what had happened to me. And she LAUGHED! Instead of being sympathetic, she laughed loudly, unable to hold it down, howling like crazy (the only thing that made me happy was that she was clutching her stomach in pain afterwards). And the most embarrassing thing was that I was in front of my house, where public can easily see me from the main road (and it _was_ a main road). I could only hope there was no one seeing me there, doing a perfect impersonation of a fish.

Man that was one of the most embarrassing (and definitely memorable) events of my life. One that I hope wouldn't be repeated anytime soon.

Heh, I have completed this chapter when I was back in my hometown, even before the prior chapter was finished (still 6 pages of A4). I left that chapter in my computer back in my boarding house, still waiting for me to finish it.

Next chapter, the infamous chuunin exam that I know all of you had waited (impatiently, I might say) will start (and so yes, there will be time skip. I wasn't that crazy to write day by day activity, you know.)

Oh and can someone tell me, just which accent of English I used? England's? America's? Or is it a fucked up accent because I mixed all of them? I mean I was taught by my English teacher back in my junior high to write 'behaviour' instead of 'behavior' or 'saviour' instead of 'savior', but my damn computer always told me that I was wrong when writing 'neighbour' since it should be 'neighbor'. I think that reading so many different fanfictions from different authors (and watching films) influenced me greatly. Too bad I wasn't up to eat a whole dictionary.

Well, HarbringerLady is now out!

…Well, not exactly, I still haven't told you something. Anyone ever wondering about why I used harbringer as my pen name?

Well, actually it was because of…a mistake (cough, cough). Instead of harbringer it should be harbinger. I spelled it wrong. Not because of incidental, but I really thought that harbringer was the right spelling at the time (and that my computer messed up the translation like usual). Eventually I realized my mistake when some ones asked me about my penname and made me ponder about it. I decide to not change it, because I like the sound of harbringer better (no matter if people thought it was a silly reason).

Heh :D

See you later in another chapter of my fics.

Ah, I forget another thing. Remember about another HarryPotter fic I had developed that I decided to hold it for now? I think I put the news of it in an author's note of one of my fics…which fic, I don't remember. It now has 5 chapters, but still no title. I'll write at least 5 more chapters and think about how I'll end the fic first, before I released it (I think).

Well this is the final good bye (I think). Jya ne.


	11. Chapter 11

Author's Note: I'm not really pleased with this chapter, but there you go: Chapter Eleven! Edited version by **KarinMS.**

Chapter Eleven

Harry drank the tea Dobby had served him in satisfaction, as he read an encyclopedia of ninja's weapons intently. Unfortunately for the wizard, there were many kanji alphabets to learn; more than he'd like to. Although he lived with Naruto, the boy couldn't help him as he didn't know much about kanji either, though he was better at it than him seeing that he practically lived here all his life. He first thought was that it was common to have a boy like him not knowing much of kanji, but then he saw Sasuke and Sakura didn't have a problem like their blonde teammate.

Naruto's education was sadly lacking and Iruka had confirmed it. Even though he noted that Naruto's desire to be Hokage had diminished, it didn't mean he could just throw away formal education. If Naruto truly wanted everyone to acknowledge him, he had to be at least knowledgeable. Being ninja didn't just mean brute force.

Harry sighed and looked down at another book on his lap: Kanji for Dummies. Though he was a bit offended by the title he knew that there were some truths there. He was a beginner and thus was considered a dummy. Still, that didn't stop his urge to tear apart the book or other books with kanji alphabets in them.

He looked up at the practicing genin and grinned. At least he wouldn't be the only one to learn it. If he had to drag Naruto forcefully then so be it. Naruto shivered and turned around, but the only thing he saw was his host sipping his tea peacefully as he sat on the corridor's wooden floor. He frowned and then shrugged in confusion, before he turned back to his kata.

Later at night Naruto stared at the dinner on the table and poked one of the foods with his chopsticks. "What's this?"

"Vegetables."

"I know that, but why put vegetables here?"

"Eating ramen every time has stunted your growth, so I decided to remedy it. Vegetables are good for your body."

"But—"

"I'm not saying I forbid you to eat ramen, but just reduce the amount. It's not healthy for you," _then again perhaps Kyuubi's presence has solved that problem._ He then looked at Naruto's short body. _Nah…_

Naruto sulked inwardly. He didn't have a problem reducing the amount of ramen he ate, as Dobby's (and sometimes Harry's) cooking were delicious. But seriously… vegetables? That was so _ugh_. He wasn't a rabbit for God's sake.

Harry sighed when Naruto returned to his room. The boy picked very little of the vegetables, preferring to eat meat and the desserts. Well at least he ate some of it, better than nothing. For a boy who disliked vegetables it was a definite improvement. But improvement or not, it was still not enough. He decided to talk with Dobby about it later.

Meanwhile Kyuubi was grumbling inside his cage, as Naruto ranted that he hated vegetables and that vegetables were evil. Well, the demon fox could agree to that. Vegetables were a definite no-no. But why couldn't he muffle his voice? It was too loud. Beside if he hated vegetables then he shouldn't eat it! Case closed! A flash of the demon's face he had met before caused him to look up.

That demon was the reason his host ate vegetables? Ridiculous! No sane demon would eat something as atrocious as the vile vegetables. The demon wasn't a vegetarian, was he? Kyuubi frowned, starting to wonder if the man was really a demon. But there was no mistake that he was indeed a demon. The after image of a humanoid demon proved it.

While his tenant was musing, Naruto entered his room and lay on the bed with a sigh. He blinked and shot off of the bed, walking to the drawer and took some fresh clothes before he entered the bathroom. He took off his clothes and went to the shower, turning the water tap to 'hot'. The grimes he had managed to accumulate that day were scrubbed off. His muscles relaxed as warm water touched his skin. He remembered how he always had to bathe with cold water. The landlord had sabotaged his water tap and he couldn't get any hot water at all and when he asked the landlord about it the man got angry; he never spoke about it to him afterwards, knowing that it was a futile attempt.

He filled the bathtub with hot water, as he washed his hair thoroughly. He entered the bathtub afterwards, relaxing there. He could get used to this.

All of his tiredness started to go away and Naruto felt peace.

Inside his cage Kyuubi blinked, as he watched the floor. Yes, the floor was usually damp, but getting flooded? Heck, it had never happened! **What the fuck!? **His host didn't do something stupid like drowning in a bathtub, did he? Kyuubi peered outside with his chakra. It was difficult to do, as Naruto didn't project any images to him (albeit unconsciously). **Wait… he _did_…** The fox demon wanted to groan. Just as he thought that he was going to die because of his host; drowning of all things, someone took Naruto's body out of the tub roughly.

"_Naruto!_"Naruto coughed out water that he had inhaled. Harry was by his side, slapping his hand on his back. "Jeez, kid, just because you don't like it when I asked you to eat vegetables, there's no need to kill yourself!" Naruto didn't answer, both because he was too busy coughing his lungs out and he didn't hear his question. Harry wrapped a towel around his body and brought him to the bed.

"W-what happened?" Naruto blinked, his voice was hoarse and his throat was sore.

"You don't remember?" Harry rubbed his back, as Naruto shook his head. "You were drowning in the bathtub, Naruto."

Naruto stiffened and then turned toward him, his face was still pale. "I was _what_?"

"Drowning in the bathtub," the young wizard repeated. "Now, I know you hate vegetables, but there is no need to kill yourself over it," Harry said. There was an amused glint in his eyes, but Naruto couldn't see it.

"What? But I wasn't going to kill myself. It's just-well-uh-I guess that I was too tired and then I drifted off to sleep…" Naruto muttered; his cheeks were red.

Harry chuckled. "Well, you're lucky that I knew you were in trouble or you'd be dead right now. Next time; be careful."

"Sorry," the blonde boy murmured.

"It's alright," Harry pushed Naruto's wet bangs out of his face and muttered a quick drying charm.

Naruto blinked sleepily. "Huh? Then he touched his now dry hair. "Neat!" he commented, as he fought to open his eyes.

"Just sleep. I'll take care of you," Naruto's eyelids were starting to drop; his lips were moving saying something incomprehensive. Harry smiled, "You're welcome, Naruto, and no; you're not a nuisance at all." Harry decided to stay there watching the sleeping boy for another ten minutes, before he exited the room and switched off the lamp. There was a warm feeling in his chest when he watched the young boy sleep. Was this the feeling of having a family? It was… nice, he guessed. He definitely could get used to it.

Naruto woke up the next morning, feeling refreshed and recharged. A miso ramen greeted him on the table, although he found there was a small amount of vegetables inside the bowl too. Sighing, he gobbled down the noodles, wondering where Harry was. The small green creature who was in charge of the house brought him a plate of bacon and omelet, before he shuffled back to the kitchen. As he ate the bacon Harry entered the kitchen and plopped down on the chair. Dobby brought him a plate of fruit salad and hot coffee.

"Thanks, Dobby," he sipped the warm drink and picked his food.

"You looked like hell, nii-san," Naruto commented. His hair was messier than usual and he looked terribly sleepy.

"Wha? Oh, right. I don't get much sleep these days. There is a lot to do," he began to eat his food in a slow pace. Back in his world where he was hunted he didn't get much sleep too, but he guessed that it had something to do with the adrenaline rush he had gotten. "Don't worry, after everything is finished I'll take my sweet time to sleep and rest," _and to train, must not forget about training._ Both of them ate in comfortable silence.

When Harry was finished with his food (Naruto was savoring the ice cream Dobby had given him), he stood up and shoved a piece of paper in Naruto's hand.

"Eh, what's this?" the boy looked up from his ice cream and read it. "Practice your left hand; the strength, speed and accuracy are much worse than your right. You'll be in trouble if your right hand is incapacitated. You're a power house and stamina freak, but you're a bit slow. Do something about it," Naruto blinked. "Harry-niisa—Are?" Naruto looked around him; Harry was nowhere to be found. "Dobby!" the elf appeared with a crack.

"Yes, Naruto sir?"

"Where's Harry-niisan?"

"Mr. Potter has gone to his weapon shop. Apparently a shipment of standard ninja weapons arrived this morning," said the elf, as he handed Naruto his lunch box.

"Hee…" Naruto nodded and accepted it. _That was fast. _"Thanks, Dobby. I'm leaving for my team meeting now." Dobby bowed low, as Naruto dashed out of the house.

Meanwhile in the meeting spot, Naruto was shocked to find his chronically-late-sensei had already arrived before him. He had purposely stayed late for an hour the day Kakashi arrived earlier than usual. "Whoa, you're not late!"

Kakashi turned his annoyed glare to the blond. "And _you_ are late for an hour," he flipped the porn book back to his pants pocket and crossed his arms. "Any excuse?"

"Nope, but I guess your habit has rubbed off on me," said Naruto cheekily. So what if he had to wait for an hour? He was used to wait for Kakashi for several hours.

Kakashi sighed. "Anyway, there's news that Konoha will host the chuunin exam this year in 3 months time. There is no definite plan yet, but it will surely be held in 3 months. I'll start to train you seriously from now on."

"_Aha_! So you _do_ admit that you didn't even try to train use before this," Naruto pointed triumphantly at Kakashi. The masked jounin scowled.

"Eh? You're going to enter us, Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura exclaimed in shock. It was unusual for a rookie team to take the exam, except if they were extraordinaire.

Naruto frowned and his lifted fingers were lowered. "Sakura is right. I don't mind training, but are you really gonna make us enter the exam? We're still rookies after all."

"Are you afraid, dobe?" Sasuke smirked.

Naruto scowled. "Hardly, but I don't fancy getting myself killed just because I'm not ready. Kakashi-sensei has neglected our training for so long that I doubt even though he wants to train us seriously we'll be ready by the time of the exam," Kakashi's eye twitched, "After all it will allow killings and the participants are supposed to be the best from their own villages. I don't want to fail and humiliate myself or worse getting myself killed. Not to sound humble or something, but I realize that I'm still lacking many things to be a good ninja. Anyway I don't think I need to rush everything. But if you want to enter it, be my guest. I won't forbid you or anything," Naruto shrugged.

Naruto, the stubborn mule dobe actually admitted he wasn't ready? Sasuke stared at the blonde boy.

The silver haired jounin cleared his throat. He didn't know that Naruto even had any sense. "Entering the exam or not is up to you three—Yes, Sasuke, all team members have to agree first before you can enter the chuunin exam as a team. You can't enter the exam individually, sorry," he didn't feel sorry at all. "Still, I'm going to prepare you incase you decide to take it. I'm going to cut our mission time short in exchange for training," Kakashi turned to Naruto. "Is that okay with you, Naruto?"

The genin boy understood why he asked him that. He was an orphan and until Harry took him in (seemed like Kakashi didn't know about it yet) he was alone and had to come by money on his own. The orphan fund Sandaime had given him was pretty tight for his daily needs alone; especially when people always overpriced the goods he wanted to buy and gave him the worst goods they could find. It seemed the old man hadn't taken that into consideration when he handed him the money. When he became a genin, his mission payment had helped him a bit (well… a lot, not that he wanted to tell anyone that catching a cat on missions helped his life). Now that he was taken in by Harry, however, he didn't have to worry about that anymore.

"It's okay. In fact I don't think I'll need the orphan fund anymore," Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "Oh right, I haven't told you yet, but I have moved into Harry-niisan's house."

"…You have?"

Naruto nodded. "He offered to take me in and I agreed. You should see my room!" Naruto grinned. "It is much more spacious than my old one!" Sasuke watched him with narrowed eyes.

"Does Sandaime know about it already?" Kakashi asked carefully.

"Yup! Since yesterday actually."

"Oh." He would need to talk with the Hokage about it, like why he didn't tell him about the news. He was Naruto's jounin instructor after all.

Meanwhile, Harry was ordering the delivery men to put the weapon crates inside his shop. After they exited the shop, he immediately waved his hand and some of the weapons flew out of the crates into specific places on the shelves, while the rest stayed in the crates and were placed in the store room. He went to label the shelves and put on the price tags. Before he was finished with it, however, the door to his shop opened with a ringing sound because of the bell he put there.

Harry looked up and noticed a long white haired man entered his shop. "I'm sorry, but this store hasn't been opened yet," said Harry, as the man turned his eyes toward him.

"So, you're the new blacksmith I have heard much about from Sarutobi-sensei," the middle aged man stated, ignoring the fact that the shop hadn't been opened yet.

"Sarutobi?" Harry frowned, not knowing who the man was talking about. "And who are you?"

"Huh? You've never heard of me, the Great Jiraiya?" he asked with wide eyes. The wizard shook his head. "Then I believe an introduction is needed!" Harry's eyes twitched. "I am one of the sannins of Konoha! The frog summoner and the creator of the greatest book in the universe; Icha Icha Paradise! I am Jiraiya, the frog sennin!" Harry was reminded of a kabuki show he had seen on TV when he was a kid and sweatdropped, wondering why the man wasn't in an asylum.

"Riiiighhht…" the two stared at each other awkwardly. "And? Who is this Sarutobi?"

"Huh, you don't know? He's the Third Hokage; Sandaime. His name is Sarutobi," Jiraiya blinked.

"I didn't know his real name, only his title," Harry replied. "Well, I guess since you're his student… you're his student, right?" The white haired man nodded. "Then I'll allow you to look around. What do you need? I'm afraid that there isn't much variation right now," half of the space was still empty.

"Actually I'm more interested of you," Jiraiya took a seat on the cashier's table and smirked.

"..You're not gay, aren't you?" Harry backed off.

The frog sennin's jaw dropped in shock. "What do you mean gay? I'm perfectly straight!" he bellowed in horror. "I only want to know what makes my sensei intrigued, that's all," he protested.

"Oh, really?" he stared intently at his eyes.

"Really, really," Yondaime's former sensei nodded.

_Well at least he doesn't try to sneak around… He scores some brownie points for that alone._ "Start talking then. What do you want to know? I'll answer as best as I could. _But_ I get to ask you questions too."

Jiraiya thought of it for a moment and then shrugged. "Why not? I'll answer your questions as best as I can too. So, tell me about you."

"About my what? My life? I'm afraid that I won't be able to tell you much. Well, my name is Harry Potter. I was born at July 31; 19 years ago. My parents were James and Lily Potter or Potter James and Lily, according to the custom here. They died when I was one year old; murdered by a racist maniac. I lived with my aunt from my mother's side for 10 years and the seven summers after that before I took off on my own. A war brewed in my homeland, led by that racist maniac. I managed to kill him at last, but then I was washed away to Wave Island where I met team 7 of Konoha." Jiraiya knew that Harry didn't tell him much and wouldn't answer if he asked further. "Now, I get to ask you a question. Do you know Uzumaki Naruto?" Jiraiya stiffened. "It seemed that he was quite close with the Hokage and you _are_ his student."

"I know _of_ him, but I'm afraid I don't know him. It has been so long since I set foot here. I always wandered out of Konoha."

_Makes you wonder why you're here right now,_ Harry thought with a smirk.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because many people eye him with hostility. I know he's a good kid, and have to wonder why he seems to be hated by them. I can count those who are kind to him on one hand. I also know that the younger generations don't know why he's hated, only that their parents dislike him and tell them that he is a delinquent. One of those I met even shouted that he was a demon, which is quite ridiculous I must say. So, do you know why?"

"…You have done your homework, I see," Jiraiya said dryly.

Harry smirked. "Of course."

"Well, I can't tell you about that because there is a law that prohibits me from telling you," Jiraiya scratched his hair.

"There's a law specifically made for Naruto?" Harry raised an eyebrow.

The sennin nodded. "I can only tell you that people are afraid of him… well, more like what he has the potential to be, I guess."

"That makes no sense. If they're afraid of him, shouldn't they-oh, I don't know-grovel at his feet and hope they don't anger him?"

Jiraiya snorted. "Tell that to them. My turn to ask then. I heard you made a special sword that rivaled Raijin."

"Raijin?" Harry asked.

"Nidaime's lightning sword. It's an heirloom of sort, but it was stolen by a thief years ago."

"A lightning sword, you say? Interesting," Harry commented. "Hm, well I made Zeus, that's the name of my sword by the way; after the name of an ancient God who used lightning as his weapon, when I was 17 years old. I was out of my relative's house and was no longer in school." Jiraiya wondered what kind of school he had attended. "I was apprenticed under Master Kienne. He was the one who taught me how to become a blacksmith. All in his family were blacksmiths. He had this ancient broken sword that his ancestor had made. I used the essence of said sword to be the sword I had worked on forging for months. It already had its lightning power by then, so I guess that I only re-forged the sword." That wasn't true, but what Jiraiya didn't know wouldn't hurt him. "That's why I don't know how to make another sword as special as Zeus, aside from the fact I almost gotten myself to be killed. I don't know how to recreate said essence of the sword and the knowledge was lost through time."

"And your master allowed you to do that?" he asked skeptically.

"He said that I was destined to be with the sword," Harry smirked. He didn't know why, but he felt somewhat comfortable around this man. He reminded him of Sirius or Fred or George or even Naruto. There was an air of mischievousness around him.

"So you had long decided to become a blacksmith?" his reply was a laugh.

"Actually no. I had never considered becoming a blacksmith before I was outside the school. In fact I had thought that I would be an Auror, our version of the police in my homeland. But then I thought about it again. I don't like my government; most of them are so pompous and annoying I can't stand them. Don't know what landed me on Master Kienne's doorstep," he chuckled. "I heard that ninjas here only need to be in school until they turn into genins. Lucky bastards," he muttered.

"Actually as soon as they're out of academy real life would bite them in the ass. Ninjas matured faster that way, especially in the time of war."

Harry was about to speak when the door of his shop rang again. "Hm, I think I'll need a 'closed and open' sign," he muttered. "I'm sor—Iruka-san?" it was Iruka who stood on the front. "Is there something I can help you with?"

The academy teacher rubbed his temple. "Well, I heard that Naruto moved into your house," he trailed off. Jiraiya's eyes widened a fraction. Sandaime hadn't told him anything about that.

Harry nodded. "Yes, he did. Is there something wrong with that?"

The brown haired man shook his head. "Actually no. I just want to say that I'm grateful of what you've done for him. The boy deserves it. I'm afraid that my hands are pretty much tied and I'm happy to know that someone is standing up for him."

"It's not a problem. He's a good kid and I like him," Iruka nodded. He then noticed the white haired man beside Harry. "Jiraiya-sama?" he blinked. The man reminded him of the photo of Sandaime and his genins on his table.

"Ohoho, there's someone who recognized me, the Great Jiraiya at last! So have you read my great novel Icha Icha Paradise?" he asked.

Iruka's lips twitched. "Excuse me?" that was the name of the porn book Naruto had told him that his jounin always read in front of his students.

"You haven't heard of it?" Jiraiya asked, horrified. "Not a problem, because I always bring copies of my books!" he then took out an orange book from his clothes and shoved it into Iruka's hands. Harry had the sudden urge to flee somewhere else and he trusted his instinct, especially when Iruka's expression darkened. But he couldn't do that, this was his shop.

Iruka's fists clenched. "You're the author of this book?" he asked in a soft growl.

"Indeed I am!" the man yelled proudly, not knowing about the looming danger.

Iruka then turned to Harry. "Excuse me, Harry-san, but I need to borrow Jiraiya-sama for a moment. A talk about the importance of examples set by an elder, you see."

The former Boy-Who-Lived nodded. "Don't let me bother you two," Harry waved his hands, as Iruka dragged a bewildered sennin with him forcefully, not having an idea that Iruka would soon chew him out. "Now back to work!"

There were other deliveries that day and Harry was busy arranging his shop. He considered hiring a worker or two to help him, so he could focus on forging weapons and training; instead of standing around his shop and serving customers. With that in thought, he let the weapons arrange themselves (he had closed down the shop to make sure no one entered it) and wrote a vacancy letter for two workers. The applicator would be interviewed later by himself using legilimency discreetly to make sure his would-be workers accepted Naruto or at least didn't outright hate him.

After he was finished with the shop he decided to take a nap in his own bedroom and immediately apparated there, not caring about his stalkers that were planted outside his shop. Let them watch the shop for a _long_ time. After eating his lunch and getting sleepier, he decided to crash on his bed and drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

Meanwhile, Naruto and the others had Kakashi beat the crap out of them by his hellish training. Sakura were resting under a big tree as her body couldn't take more strain. Naruto and Sasuke were panting. Team 7 had been given weights to put on their ankles and was ordered to get used to the feel of the weights by running 5 laps around the training field. Afterwards Kakashi set off a group of dog-nins - complete with sets of claws and fangs - to chase after them and unless they wanted to be bitten in the ass they had to run away, using everything in their arsenal to fend off the dogs. Bad news was they weren't allowed to fight the dogs directly.

Naruto whizzed, as he leapt to dodge a bulldog attempting to bite his leg, and created a couple of bunshins to distract the dogs. Sasuke, who was beside him, couldn't help but feel grateful for the clones. They had been running for hours non-stop. He'd like to ask for a 'time's up' like Sakura, but there was no way he did that before Naruto. He was annoyed, however, that he wasn't allowed to directly fight the summons. Most of his techniques were offense moves and thus couldn't be used here. Naruto was lucky to have the kage bunshin technique, as his clones could fight the battle for him and distracted his opponents by either attacking or laying traps. Stills he wondered how come Naruto hadn't dropped dead from chakra exhaustion. He had created hundreds of bunshins during their training. The heir of the Uchiha clan himself had conserved his chakra for running and not doing any jutsus.

Kakashi had said that there would come the time when they needed to escape without engaging their enemies and this was training for that kind of situation. The black haired genin didn't want to admit it, but Naruto was the better one among team 7 members to distract his opponents while loosing their pursuits. Their training was harder because they weren't allowed to exit training field 7's perimeter.

"What I wouldn't do for a dung bomb right now," Naruto panted.

"Why in the hell do you want a dung bomb of all things?" Sasuke almost lost his footing on the branch he landed on.

"Dogs are using their noses, ears and eyes to track people. If we can somehow incapacitate their senses, we'll be able to rest," the blonde genin reasoned. "Oh well, Kakashi-sensei told us to not exit the field, but he said nothing for my bunshins," he managed a weak smile. "I have a couple of dung bombs ready to be used and perhaps some other things in my room. Let my bunshins get it for us," he created two bunshins and, without speaking to them, his bunshins leapt to the direction of his new home.

"And why didn't you do it sooner?" the weight, even if he only had 5 pounds each on his ankles, were straining his legs.

"Because I wanted to test my durability, but this is starting to get old. Why? Are you almost at your limit, Sasuke-_chan_?" he teased.

"In your dreams, dobe," he gritted his teeth.

"Hah, I don't see you do anything helpful except for planting those explosion tags and run! I might not be as fast as you, but my endurance is more than making up for it. And why are you following me anyway?"

"I am _not_ following you!"

"Riiiigggghhhhtttt," Naruto commented and they continued to run.

Harry blinked tiredly when he felt a shadow of Kyuubi's presence in the house. There were two of them. He immediately guessed that they were Naruto's clones. The real Naruto would have a stronger feeling of Kyuubi around him and none of them felt like that and he could only detect weak sign of the fox demon.

He apparated to Naruto's room, yawning. "What are you doing?" he asked them.

The two bunshins turned toward him and with a grin plastered on their faces showed him a case of dung bombs made by yours truly Naruto-sama. "Boss needed them for his training. He wanted to use them for traps."

"Traps you say?" the wizard blinked, some of his weariness ebbing away. "Hm… I might be able to help him," he remembered the pranking goods he got from the Weasley twins. It had saved his lives a couple of times too and he was thankful that the twins showed him how they created them. "One of you comes with me. The other can send the bombs to Naruto, while I search for a couple of things." The bunshins looked at each other and shrugged. One of them rose and dashed away to Harry's bedroom.

By the time he got there, Harry was rummaging through a small wooden case and took out some things from it. "Aha! Portable swamp! What a remembrance! By the way, who's his opponent?" Harry asked.

"A group of nin-dogs."

"Dogs you say? Hm… then let's use these fake bones! Guaranteed to attract dogs like a bitch in heat! Dung bombs v. III will be able to knock out the dogs—and other living beings, actually—for days! A red paint that will create the illusion of being cats to those that are splashed by it! And this! And this too!" the bunshin sweatdropped, as Harry cackled evilly. "And lastly; a camera! Always remember to bring a camera! Don't forget to take snapshots, alright!" he patted the bunshins on the shoulder after he dumped the pranking goods in his hands. "Now shoo, I want to get back to my sleep!" Harry pushed Naruto's clone out of his room and went back to his sleep. He dreamed of the twins and how they taught him to be what they called the 'Proud son of Prongs' before they were killed. Here in this world without someone trying to kill him (stalking was different) this mischievous side of him was able to be let out for a moment when he was half awake. When he woke up later he wouldn't even remember giving Naruto's clones anything.

Needless to say it was a sad day for Kakashi's dogs… and an eventful day for Naruto.

Kakashi had to treat his dogs at Inuzuka's later, where he was chewed out on the importance of taking well care of his partners, even if they were summons.

"Harry-niisan, thank you for those things you had sent to me!" Naruto yelled cheerfully.

Harry blinked and stared at the blond. "Ha? I sent you something?" he said dumbly.

"Eh? You were the one who sent those portable swamps and the other things, right?"

"Portable swamp? How do you know about it?" he asked in confusion. He didn't remember ever telling Naruto about that thing, much less sending it to him.

"Eh? But my clone said you gave me those things, you even asked me to take photos! And the bunshin's memory confirmed it!"

"…" curious, Harry took a look at Naruto's mind and sweatdropped when he saw himself—or someone that looked like him—cackled like madman. He dug into his own memories and got a fuzzy memory about rummaging something and gave that to Naruto's clone. "Oh, yeah. That…" _Damn, that sleep must have muddled my brain or something!_ "I remember it now. You're… welcome then."

"Ne, ne, did you create those things by yourself? They're so cool!"

"Actually they're the remnants of pranking materials that I had gotten from my friends. They were pranksters and quite ingenious too," Harry said with a smirk, remembering their pranks during their Hogwarts days. "_But_ if you want to, I can make some for you," he said.

"Eh? Can't you just tell me how to create them myself?" he protested.

"Sorry, but even if I tell you—which I won't—you won't be able to create them. You don't have the necessary skill; in fact none of the people here have this ability."

"You mean like a bloodline?" Naruto asked dejectedly.

"Bloodline? Yes, I suppose it is," the genin's head lowered. "So how's your day? You looked pretty much out of it when you arrived."

"It's good, I guess. I mean Kakashi was actually punctual and he even said that he was going to train us seriously from now on. Not that I'll forget just how many hours I had to wait for him and how our trainings were neglected," he bit out. "Oh, and about that paper you gave me this morning, the one about speed? Well, this day he decided to give us weights, not much, but we'll feel the strain after we train for some time. I'm thinking of increasing the weight of the bands."

"As long as you don't strain yourself too fast, I'm fine with it." _Yeah right, as if._ Harry remembered how he strived to break his limit everyday after his friends all died. And Naruto was as stubborn as he himself, if not more. Beside he didn't have to worry much about his body's condition. Naruto had Kyuubi to thank for that. It was Kyuubi's power which healed all of Naruto's injuries.

He wondered if he could control his bonded demon's power to do the same. Not an instant healing that would take its toll of his body that happened when he was wounded in his demonic frenzy, but gradual healing in which its pace he could control. He had once asked Naruto subtly about how he felt the next morning after he trained hard. Naruto told him that his body felt refreshed and he didn't feel sore. If only he somehow could do the same he wouldn't have much problem after being possessed by his demonic sword. And surely using demonic power constantly would let his body adjust faster and then he would be able to be a berserker for a longer time and channel more power to his body.

Yes, the idea merited some thinking.

Dinner was a lively occasion this time, as Naruto narrated his training that day (and exaggerated it a bit). The boy wondered why there were so little vegetable dishes than the other night, but decided to shut his mouth. Unknown to Naruto the truth was the other way around. Most of the food were vegetarian food. They looked and even tasted like meat but they were not. Dobby still cooked meat since Naruto was a growing boy and would need nutrition.

_What he doesn't know will not hurt him_, Harry smiled softly as he watched Naruto retreat to his room upstairs.

Two days later, after he felt that his shop was complete enough, he opened it helped by Naruto's bunshins. The real one was still training under Kakashi. And boy was he grateful for the help, because just as he opened the door a group of ninjas: genin, chuunin, jounin and even some ANBUs, were there. The wizard wondered whether Sandaime's free ad was a bit too much. At least now he wouldn't have to worry about not getting any customer.

Some ninjas stopped in their tracks when they saw Naruto (or rather his bunshins) were there. Fortunately the ninjas didn't say anything before they resumed their activity. Perhaps because they didn't want to end up on his wrong side. Rumours about him standing up for Naruto had spread fast. He felt that he had acted quite accordingly to those who attempted to persuade him of Naruto's deceit and evilness.

Although he didn't really need the money, he still set a standard price, not wanting the other weapon shops to get angry for lowering his prices. By the time the shop was closed down more than half of his own creations were sold; mostly kunais and shurikens, or swords for ANBUs. Some customers even gave him pointers that he wrote down in his notebook.

Three days after that he hired three workers to take over the shop. Two of them were girls and all three didn't have any problems with Naruto. Harry himself would stay in the shop for 1 to 2 hours in the morning only.

Right now he was choosing a pair of 15 pounds ankle weight bands for Naruto from his collections. After picking them up he went back to his house and put them in Naruto's room. Picking up his sword, he rode out on his horse and searched for a good training ground around Konoha. It felt good to ride a horse again, to feel the wind caress his face. He had no flying broom here and his animagus form was too eye-catching to be used.

Harry decided to hold off on the kanji learning for Naruto, seeing that the boy was busy training and he didn't want to make Naruto think that he was controlling his life. The boy had told him about the upcoming chuunin exam and though he was excited at the possibility to show off his worth, he was worried that he wasn't ready for this year. Personally the Head of the Potter family felt that it would be a good idea for Naruto to enter it. If he would ever encounter a tight situation he was sure that Kyuubi would help him as the fox wouldn't want to die. Beside he wanted to see what Naruto was capable of. He only told Naruto that it would be a good experience if he was to enter the exam. The blond perked up and told him that he'd enter if he felt he was ready for it. He was sure that if Sasuke wanted to enter the exam, Sakura would follow even if she didn't want to. And he knew that Sasuke was eager to take the exam. Kakashi also seemed to want them to take the offer, whether it was because he felt they were ready or because he wanted to brag about his rookie team entering the exam or perhaps because it was Konoha who hosted the exam and thus his team would have the advantage because they were used to the climate and terrain (which would tell how little he thought of the team if it was the case) or not, Naruto didn't know.

Harry had trained Naruto in the basic sword style a bit, so Naruto could practice using his black kodachi on his own. He told the boy to ask for someone else's help for further training, since his sword style was different seeing that his sword was a huge double-edged one (and was capable of electrocuting someone to boot). Naruto was told to be careful because his kodachi was sharper and stronger than a common kodachi and it was coated by a paralysis potion, which was the cause of the black color of the short sword. The black haired young man had given him the antidote. He could only hope that Naruto didn't forget to bring it with him when he was training. It wouldn't be funny to have him paralyzed because of a small mistake on his part.

For his training, Harry started to practice using ninja weapons too; mainly using kunais and shurikens, since he had practiced with throwing knives before he learned to use a sword. The first time he trained it was hard. It was different from using a wand that didn't need power to boost the magic out of the wooden stick and he had snapped his wrist four times before he was able to get the stance right. He was no good when it came to using something long like wires or chains though. He had tried to use a combination of sickle and long chain (like the one Kohaku in Inuyasha used) only to be unable to control it and received the end of the sickle on his forehead. It was thankfully the blunt side or he'd have lost so much blood and perhaps even suffered brain damage. He wouldn't die, he had Zeus to thank for that. He had to drink a foul potion to heal his purplish bump in just seconds to avoid Naruto seeing the bruise and asking him where he got it. Fortunately there was no one around him to watch the embarrassing scene. The wizard never tried that weapon again.

He also started to train his body harder, even though he was much stronger than normal people in his world. Sadly he knew there were ninjas that were capable of going against him and win here, especially if he was without the help of the demon he bonded to. His non-verbal magic was going to be an asset here. Sure even the ninjas here shouted the name of their attack, but if he, who was a non-ninja, did that that would be the same as announcing his presence and thus signing his own death sentence. Stealth, surprise, speed and a bit demon's power here and there (and of course don't forget about his luck) would help him much. He didn't need strength much with his magic, but he needed it to use his sword. Relying on adrenaline would hurt him in the future. These people weren't the same like the ones in his world. Their fighting prowess and skills were very different and so he had to adapt if he wanted to survive.

He had promised his friends that he would live for them. And now he had someone to care for. He would become stronger so it wouldn't happen again. He wouldn't let someone hurt his precious people, not this time around. Harry knew that Naruto was bound to be hurt. He was a ninja after all, but Harry would do his best to make sure he didn't die like his friends and to provide a safe and warm home for the blonde boy.

His mind drifted to the other boy of team 7. He had heard from Naruto that the boy's clan members were all killed, leaving him as the only survivor. Naruto didn't know the person who was responsible for the massacre and he didn't want to ask the angsty boy. Harry had once thought of inviting the black haired genin to join them, but stopped before he even asked him. Sasuke was too proud. He wouldn't accept the offer. He was from an influential clan and surely had many offers like that, and since he was living alone that would mean he refused those offers. Beside he was more worried about Naruto who was all alone from his birth and if he invited Sasuke too Naruto might think that he was just an addition, because of pity. Sasuke had many people who adored him, while Naruto only had a handful of them.

The young wizard wanted to be one of those handful people. He wanted to be special in someone's eyes, not just one of many. He knew that the reason was selfish. And in the end he chose Naruto over Sasuke. If someone asked him to reconsider it, he'd do the same thing over and over again. Because of the war he was weary when it came to trusting people. He knew that Naruto wouldn't betray him, but he couldn't say the same for the young black haired ninja. Right now the boy was reminding him of himself when he was hell bent on revenge. He could see it in his eyes. And he was uncomfortable with it. He didn't need or want a reminder of what he once was. He wanted to forget about it.

Harry sighed and cleared his head from such depressing thought. Here he could create a new life so he might as well enjoy it.

TBC…

The real reasons why Harry didn't offer Sasuke to stay with him (not just because he didn't want to appear to be conversing with a statue) is now revealed. In the end Harry is still a human who's bound to make mistakes and isn't perfect. Like Kakashi, his past is still interfering with (and screwing up) his life. Naruto reminds him of himself when he was staying with his aunt, wanting acceptance. Harry was able to recover from it because he had his friends, but he was still unable to face the fact (in this story) that he acted like a monster and slaughtered many people and creatures without an ounce of compassion.

On the other hand, Kakashi liked Sasuke better because he was similar to him, while Naruto reminded him of his dead friend Obito, and his dead sensei (well, they _do_ look alike; blonde hair, blue eyes and similar faces) and the Kyuubi who killed his sensei (he didn't hate him for it, but every time he saw Naruto he would be reminded of the nine tailed demon, telling him that he was weak and that he failed to protect his precious people… at least that's what I think)

Anyway please don't forget to review!

Next will be the long awaited chuunin exam. I wonder how I should make it turn out to be. Still haven't thought of it… Damn, that sounds like there is no plot whatsoever (sweatdrop : )


	12. Chapter 12

Auhor's Note: This chapter is edited by **KarinMS**.

Chapter Twelve

Harry was awakened from his well deserved slumber—seeing as his sore muscles, the result of his sword training all day yesterday, were screaming at him for more rest—by a loud crash and the feel of the wooden floor vibrating roughly, as if there was a short localized earthquake happening at his residence only. Grumbling for getting his sleep interrupted, he forced himself to rise from the bed lazily, something that he became accustomed to after months without people trying to kill him. A year ago if the same thing happened he'd have waken up in a second, a wand in his hand and his lips letting out curses to whoever it was that created the ruckus. 'Act first, ask later' was a habit that he had to remind himself to change, lest he wanted to curse Naruto or Dobby—especially the later who kept surprising him, Naruto was not that great in stealth… he really needed to teach that kid about that by the way—to oblivion.

Fifteen minutes later, a much more awake Harry Potter entered the kitchen for breakfast. He'd take a bath later, his tired mind told him. Dobby took pride that he could make the room as spotless as it could be. Harry couldn't even find a trace of dust when he wiped his finger on the kitchen table, checking it for the sake of curiosity. What awaited him at the table was a miserable looking Naruto with a lump on his head, after falling downstairs in his haste. The poor boy looked as if he hadn't slept a wink last night and the bump on his head didn't help him much. Seeing that Harry himself was rather grumpy this morning for having his rest interrupted, a smile lit on his face. Misery loves company after all.

Harry pulled out a seat and as soon as he sat there Dobby began to serve them breakfast. He found Naruto picking at his food, eyes not really seeing anything around him. Look like he had taken a trip to LaLa Land.

Oh right, it was 3 weeks before the exam started and today was the last day for any Leaf genin to register if they wished to join it. The offer was sent for Leaf genins only. Naruto hadn't given Kakashi his answer yet even though said jounin had already nominated his team. He wondered why the boy hadn't handed in his form yet. He knew that Naruto's already filled questionnaire form was hidden under his bed. How did he know? Dobby.

Obviously the boy had some interest to join it, seeing that he wouldn't look so miserable if he didn't.

Harry sighed. Apparently Naruto really needed to be nudged in the right direction. He looked decidedly pitiful, as if his puppy was killed in front of his eyes.

"Okay, talk!" he barked, startling the blue eyed boy.

Said boy looked up in surprise and blinked. "Huh?" he asked dumbly.

"Talk! What's bothering you?" he demanded.

"It's nothing," Naruto hastily dismissed him.

Unfortunately the boy had forgotten that Harry was a stubborn man that could even rival him, if he wanted to.

"Well, this 'nothing'," he sneered sarcastically, doing an impression that his late Potion professor A.K.A Snape the Snappy, was famous for, "—has made you skip food and added to the gloomy atmosphere in this house; I can see a dark cloud forming above your head," he pressed on. "It's a way of speech, brat," he rolled his eyes when Naruto looked above his head. Still, the boy stayed silent. "Is this about the chuunin exam?" he prompted. Naruto flinched. _Bingo_!

He looked at Harry in surprise, obviously wondering how the older man knew it, before he turned sober once more. "…Yes," he eventually said.

That was admitted much faster than he thought.

Harry tapped his finger on the table, causing the boy to observe him nervously. "What are the reasons you're so apprehensive about this?"

"Well…" the boy scratched his head. "We lack the experience. We're just rookies, fresh out of the academy. It's said that the ninjas being sent to the exam are the best of the best of their villages and I don't want to fail another exam. Two failed genin exams are already enough for me," he pursed his lips, eyes downcast not wanting to see his new brother's piercing emerald eyes for some reason.

"If you enter it, then it will be an experience for you. You can of course ask Iruka or other chuunins or jounins about their exams and compare them. I doubt they're identical, but I'm sure it's not that different either. Plus being rookies don't mean you'll lose. About the genins attending being the best of the best; I don't really think so. I mean, hello, hidden village here. There are secrets and what not that won't be revealed for just a genin exam. Even if they were truly the best of their villages, they won't just let out their trump card to be recorded for a simple genin exam that can be taken once per 6 months. Plus why are you afraid of failing? Failing is a part of the path of success… as long as you don't give up anyway. Where's the boy that I met in Wave? Are you going to back out of this opportunity just like that?"

"You mean you won't be embarrassed or disappointed in me if I fail?" the boy blurted, before slapping his hand on his mouth for the slip he made.

Harry arched an eyebrow. "Of course not. It's not as if I have never failed either. No one is perfect. Is that why you don't want to enter it? Because you're afraid that if you fail I'd be disappointed?" the boy nodded fearfully. The wizard was incredulous. "Silly little brat!" Naruto looked indignant, but didn't voice protest up. "I won't be disappointed if you fail, but I'll be if you don't give your best or come home dying. Now eat! After that you can give your form that you hid under your bed to your jounin!" the blond was alarmed to find that Harry knew about that one. A big smile bloomed on his face, before the now cheerful boy attacked his food with gusto. The two didn't realize they were being watched by a smiling house elf who wiped his tears and blew his nose on a tissue he took from nearby box.

'Well at least, that's one problem solved,' Harry sighed inwardly.

0-0 0-0 0-0

Harry was going to buy food after one of his routine sword practices when he felt a growing unease settle in his stomach, coupled by the warning spark emitted by his sword. His feeling was often set off by ninjas (the competent ones), especially by those ANBUs whose masks reminded him of death eaters. During the first weeks he had to tone down his paranoia somewhat, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to sleep, seeing as that Hokage had ordered his men to keep an eye on him. It was only in his home that he was able to relax completely. Thrice some ninjas tried to enter the area of his house without his permission and the wards he had set up along with Dobby's help repelled them. They never tried again the fourth time after he leveled up the ward for being irritated and caused the ninjas to be sent to the emergency room to be treated for second degree burns.

With a sigh, wondering what he had gotten into now, he opened the block he had put on his danger sense to feel the one who had cause his spidery sense to scream its head off. He stumbled when a wave of killing intent hit him head on, as he wasn't prepared for this kind of strong killing intent yet, but regained his footing a second after. Harry shook his head.

"Whoa, that's some killing intent. It's been so long to feel that one directed at me personally," he muttered. He turned around and spotted the source; a red haired boy, who was followed by a blonde girl with big steel strapped on her back, and a boy that wore something that seemed like a cat costume, his face was painted as if he was a Kabuki player. The red head had a big gourd with him and the skin around his eyes was black. Now… why did that sound familiar? Oh yes. Naruto had told him about the 'creepy panda guy' and his teammates from Sand. They must be here for chuunin exam.

Harry blinked. Why was the boy glaring at him? He didn't think he had done something to him. Heck it was the first time he met him. He'd like to think he was able to reign in his usual instinct from lashing out at anything remotely threatening to his health, mentally or physically. So, why?

Oh right, how could he forget? Zeus. The sword on his back was crackling threateningly and it was directed at the red head. Now that he paid attention, he could feel something demonic about him that kind of remind him of Naruto. But while in Naruto's body the evil feeling was muffled by magnitude, this boy wasn't. In fact he was oozing with it. Funnily it didn't seem like the Leaf ninjas felt it.

Not wanting to deal with the unnecessary headache, Harry apparated out, not realizing that Gaara had already marked him as a target for his 'mother'. Appearing outside the intended grocery store, he was pleased to see that he had scared off some passersby; he entered it and found one Umino Iruka was currently there too. Oh boy, the man was a firm believer that no genin should enter the chuunin exam, which was an irony because he was a chuunin himself.

"Iruka-san," Harry called him who was examining the spinach in his hold intently. Harry's lips twitched at the sight. The chuunin looked up and smiled.

"Harry-san. Shopping?"

The wizard nodded, as he reached for a shopping cart. "Yes, I'm planning to make a party to celebrate Naruto's entrance to chuunin exam," he informed the academy teacher, as he took 5 packs of tofu, knowing that he wouldn't like to hear it.

"What? What do you mean Naruto is going to enter the exam?" Iruka shouted in shock. "I thought he was reluctant to enter it!"

"Oh yes, that. It's funny actually. I had a talk with him this morning and after that he decided to enter," he scratched his head sheepishly, knowing that he'd be chewed up soon. Iruka was such a mother hen.

"What? How could you! It's better if he doesn't enter it! He's not ready yet!" All thoughts of shopping were chased out of the chuunin's mind.

Harry frowned. "And how do you know he's not ready yet? Sure I heard that the exam is dangerous, but so is life, especially for ninjas. And Naruto is a ninja and he has chosen this path. If this exam will prepare him for his life then I'm all for it."

"But he's just a kid!" he insisted.

"Really? Because I heard that genins were already considered adults by law of Konoha. Look. I know you're worried of him, but cuddling him, sheltering him won't help him. He's a ninja not an invalid. Naruto is strong. You saw how he resisted all those things thrown at him by those jackasses. And don't start me about how he needs to enjoy his childhood, because he has no happy childhood to begin with. The boy needs this. What doesn't kill him will make him stronger."

"How can you be so sure of that?"

"Well so far, I'd say he turned out darn right."

"What if he dies?"

"I have taken steps to ensure it won't happen. And no, you can't ask what it is."

"But he can still be hurt!" Iruka was adamant.

"Yeah well, no one say that life as ninja is easy. If by being hurt he'll realize that being a ninja isn't a game and thus he'll take the job seriously, I'm game," Harry had half mind to blast off the stubborn chuunin.

It was fortunate that they were in the back of the store and there was no one in sight, other than the shopkeeper, but he was in the front.

"You're a ninja too, so surely you understand what he feels. Tell you what, why don't you have a talk with him? Hear him out first."

Iruka opened his mouth, but closed it again before he sighed deeply. "…I'll do that," he murmured dejectedly.

"That's all I ask. Why don't you come over for dinner today? I'm sure Naruto will be happy. The last time you two eat together was 2 weeks ago and the kid was sure complaining to me about it."

Iruka perked up. "He was?" he asked in astonishment. It was bad for him to feel it, but Iruka was jealous. He felt like Harry had stolen the boy under his very nose.

"Yes, I also told Naruto to invite his team over. It's at 7. That will be in 4 hours. So will you come?"

"Yes, I will. So it will be only team 7 and us?"

"Actually I told him that it's alright to invite the other teams that also entered the exam. I heard all rookie genins joined the exam, but I don't know if Naruto finds them," he shrugged.

"I know where Asuma-san and Kurenai-san usually hang out. They're the teachers of the other rookie teams by the way," he said when he saw Harry's questioning look.

Harry nodded, but asked Iruka to wait until he finished with his shopping first. Three carts later, he paid for the grocery and wrote down the address to his house so the store could deliver it there. As they walked to their destination; a tea and dango shop, Harry got the occasional stares for his big wrapped sword on his back. Even after months walking with his sword, there were still some people that gave him odd looks. He even got hateful glares from those who hated Naruto, but his unnerving narrowed stare, focused by his killing intent he emanated managed to get them to back off. And most who did that were civilians, so they didn't dare to challenge an adult with a huge sword that didn't appear to have problems retaliating. A fool had challenged him and he had ended up in a coma in the hospital 2 months ago. The man hadn't awakened yet. After that no one openly showed their dislike anymore. Naruto were still glared at, but when he was with Harry people chose to ignore him lest they wanted Harry breathing down their necks. They also sold him things even though they did it grudgingly.

Apparently there was a get together or something because there were more jounins than just Asuma and Kurenai. Kakashi was there too, giggling as he read his porn book. A red eyed woman looked livid, while she squirmed exasperatedly on her seat at the same time, not liking having someone drabbed herself on her. That someone was a black haired woman with the most indecent clothes he had ever seen: fishnet shirt with only a brown coat to cover her… assets. Iruka identified the red eyed woman as Yuuhi Kurenai, while the heavy smoker one was Sarutobi Asuma. There was also a light brown haired jounin chewing on a metal toothpick who was talking to a sickly looking jounin who should be admitted to hospital in Harry's opinion. He knew the other 2 ninjas. He had seen them when he met the old Hokage. They were carrying a stack of papers at the time. If he wasn't wrong their names were Kotetsu and Izumo.

Kakashi arched his eyebrow when he saw his blonde student's guardian with the academy teacher walking toward their group. "Yo, Iruka-san, Harry-san. What bring you two here?"

"Naruto should've invited you for party tonight, Kakashi-san," Harry stated, while he glared at the porn on his hand. The Copycat-nin moved discreetly to hide his book, as he feared what he would do to his precious book.

"Huh? Oh, yes he already asked me. Sakura and Sasuke will attend it, don't worry."

"Who is he?" Anko whispered curiously in Iruka's ear, causing him to blush.

"Eh, er… he's the blacksmith that Naruto had invited to come to Konoha. You know; the one that was praised by sandaime-sama? Naruto stays with him now," he said in whisper.

"Hee…" Anko gave Harry a look over and licked her lips. Iruka gave her a worried look, not liking the expression etched on her face.

"—entering the exam, why not make this into a pre-exam party for all? The more the merrier."

Asuma and Kurenai looked at each other. For Asuma, he had heard about Harry from his father, the famed sandaime nicknamed professor, and this party would provide him with the opportunity to grill info as subtle as he could. For Kurenai, she too was curious of Harry, but the real reason why she wanted to accept his invitation was Hinata. The girl had a crush on Naruto and the boy now lived with the young man in front of her.

"Well, sure. I know that Chouji won't refuse free food and it'll be good for once in awhile to force Shikamaru out of his cloud gazing," Asuma chucked out his cigarette into an ashtray.

Kurenai nodded in agreement. "Hinata is a bit down lately and a party will cheer her up. Kiba won't say 'no' to a party. And Shino… he'll be there too."

"The—" someone was sneaking behind him, so he took a step aside and avoided being caught by whoever it was. His hand flew to his sword's handle. When he turned around, he found that it was the scantily clad black haired woman. Only the thought that she was a Konoha nin that stopped him from withdrawing his sword completely.

Meanwhile Anko was pouting. "Aw…" she cooed and was about taking a step forward when his wrapped blade crackled and let off sparks of lightning, warning her to back off. The other ninjas stared at it interestedly.

"Who the hell are you?" Harry demanded. He didn't like it. He had purposely tone down his danger sense somewhat so he wouldn't kill anyone accidentally, but this woman was trying his patience.

"Call me Anko-chan, darling," her comrades sweated. Did she have death wish or something?

"Well Anko-san, what just you're trying to do?" the wizard crossed his arms. For some reason Harry was reminded of that bug reporter, Rita Skeeter. They were both persistent, irritating and clingy as hell.

"Why, seduce you so you'll invite me too, of course. I love parties," she grinned madly.

"And what make you think I'll invite you after this? Let alone leaving you with a bunch of children?"

"Well, let's see… they're chuunin exam participants, while I'm a proctor of said exam, the 2nd part of it." The phrase 'And you don't want them to be kicked out for not inviting me' was left out, but Harry understood the message.

Harry narrowed his eyes. "And what'll I get for inviting you?"

"Hm…ever the businessman, huh? I don't know," she shrugged. "Maybe I'll accidentally say something about the exam," she suggested with a naughty smirk. The others were staring at her incredulously (minus Kakashi who was giggling, as he read his book).

The young man snorted at the older woman. He didn't believe she would tell them anything remotely informative, not to mention Naruto wouldn't accept that kind of cheating, which was strange considering a ninja should always use whatever means he could get his hands on. Harry was tempted to tell her to get lost, but he realized that people like her would bug him needlessly and persistently if he said 'no'.

"Fine, but if I find you sniffing around places where your presence is unwelcome, I'll kick you out before you can so much blink," he warned.

Orochimaru's former student arched an eyebrow. "And pray tell me how I'll know which rooms I'm not supposed to enter?" she challenged. The other ninjas watched them back and forth like a tennis match.

Harry gave her a devilish smirk. "Oh, I'm sure you'll know when—oh sorry—if it happens," he had put wards to ward off unwanted presence, which what she was clearly. Those who tried would regret the assuredly never-to-be-forgotten memory. The others were left wondering what he meant. Did he plant traps in his own house?

Harry then sent a discreet look at the other ninjas that later were introduced by Iruka. He felt bad inviting Asuma and Kurenai only (Anko excluded) in front of them. Should he invite them too? He was hoping they'd be able to reign in the crazy woman from doing whatever it was on her mad mind.

"What about you four?"

Genma blinked. "What about us?" he was a proctor for the exam too, but he didn't think Harry knew that so there was no reason to invite him unless he was just being polite.

"I'd like to invite you too for the party. Might as well invite all of you since she—" at this he sent a dark look at Anko. "—decided to use threat to have her way," he said, scowling all the way.

"I'm feeling so unloved here," Izumo muttered quietly.

"Party huh?" Kotetsu scratched his head. "Sure, I'll go," he needed all the refreshment he could get his hands on after 8 hours slaving on the flood people called paperwork that didn't seem to end anytime soon, especially with the upcoming exam.

"Sorry, but my girlfriend is going to kill me if I cancel our date for the 5th time in a week," Izumo said mournfully. Being Hokage's assistants had its disadvantages.

"If it isn't much problem," Hayate coughed. He'd like to talk with the praised blacksmith as a kenjutsu user.

"Well… someone has to reign Anko in," the kunoichi glared at senbon chewing man, who proceeded to ignore her.

"Alright for those who don't know where my house is, you can ask Kakashi to lead y—" Harry frowned and then stopped speaking. "Actually, never mind. I doubt he'll ever arrive punctually," the others snickered, while the silver haired jounin scowled.

"Don't worry, I know where it is," Iruka smiled. Inwardly Kurenai knew that Hinata would know where Naruto's house was. After all she had taken to stalk him some times (okay… many times). The red eyed kunoichi sighed when she realized that one of her students, her favorite one at that, was a hardcore stalker.

"Then I'll leave now to prepare for the party, excuse me," just as he was about to exit the tea house, Gai and his students entered. Harry froze in his track. Even though Gai was helping him improving his physic (and indeed it was developing nicely under his guidance), the man was still too strange for his taste. He wanted to discreetly leave the tea house when the green beast spotted him, causing him to swear inwardly.

"Harry-kun!" this time the young man truly groaned, not that Gai and his smaller clone noticed this, or it they did they ignored it. Gai's other students cringed sympathetically. They knew how weird Green Beast and Green Beast Jr. were, as they were forced to be in their presences constantly.

"Er, Gai-san, fancy to meet you here," he faked a smile. The other jounins snorted when they saw how uncomfortable he was. "Ah… how have you been?" he asked for the sake of politeness. He should know he shouldn't do that. The man was practically droning on about their training. "Eh, right. I have to go now or I'll be late," Harry excused himself before stopping in his track. "Speaking if which… are you all busy tonight?" he asked all members of his team.

"Well I have training like usual. Why?" the jounin asked curiously, wondering if the younger man wanted to train with him.

If he had to endure Gai's weird way then Naruto and the other rookie genins should be graced by Gai's presence (and Lee's) too. Beside it might be a good idea to introduce them to their senior genin team and possibly their future comrades. "There'll be a party in my house at 7 tonight to celebrate the genins' entrance to the exam and since your team enters it too I'm hoping you'll join us. It's just a small casual party, so not all of the genins are invited. In fact I only invited 3 teams other than yours and they're all rookie genins."

"You invited the rookies, Harry-san?" Tenten asked, startled. She had known Harry because she had seen him speaking with Gai occasionally and sometimes even trained with him. She also knew that he was the infamous blacksmith that had been talked about some months ago, but that was about it.

"Well yes. They're all Naruto's former teammates when they were academy students. At first it would be just a small party for both of us, but I thought the more people the merrier, thus I extended invitations to the other genin teams.

"Wait, Naruto as in Uzumaki Naruto?" she asked again. Harry nodded, surprised that she knew Naruto.

"Who?" Neji didn't know any Naruto.

Tenten turned to him. "You don't remember him?" he shook his head. "Remember the flushed toilet incident? Or the defaced Hokage monument?" Neji blinked and then nodded unsurely. "Well, Naruto was the culprit." The Hyuuga raised his eyebrow.

"He was?"

"Hey, I know him too!" Lee exclaimed, cutting off Tenten's reply. "Blond hair, blue eyes and strange line marks on his cheek, right?" Harry nodded. "I often saw him dodging his pursuers though it stopped after he graduated, some times I even saw ANBUs joining the hunt," Neji and Tenten blinked. They didn't know about that one. "Yosh, Uzumaki Naruto-san is so cool! His youth must be burning passionately!" the other nins (minus Gai) plus Harry sweat dropped.

"Wow, for a prankster, he sure garnered much attention," the weapon specialist muttered.

"Whatever, I have other things to do than just attending a party," the Hyuuga spoke and excused himself.

"Don't worry, Harry-kun! I'll convince my student with my burning passion even if I have to drag him!" Harry would like to say that he had much better things to do other than watching him pose, but kept his mouth shut. And before he could stop Gai following Neji, the man was already gone.

"Gai-sensei, wait for me!" Lee shouted.

Harry turned to the last member of Gai's team. "So," Harry started, "Are you going to attend the party?"

"Why not? It'll be a chance to relax. But… I was kinda hoping that I could see your weapon collection," she added sheepishly.

"Oh, right. You're a weapon specialist, right?" the girl nodded. "Alright, but it will probably be better if you show up at 6, so I can give you a tour. I'm sure you'll like it. Anyone else, aside from her I mean?" he narrowed his eyes when Anko waved her hand frantically. The woman pouted.

The other ninjas looked at each other. "Perhaps we should just arrive at 6 and the party can start at 7," Kurenai suggested. "I'm sure the genins will be pretty interested too."

"Six o'clock it is then. Tenten-san, can you please tell Gai about it?" the girl smiled and nodded. After that they parted.

When he arrived home, Harry immediately went to his potion lab to tend his potions that had been put into stasis. These potions were ranging from beginner to advanced healing potions. It was trued that he wasn't a potion master material, the drive to pursue more knowledge of it was beaten out of his body and mind by the greasy bat who called himself potion master, but Harry was still quite proficient in making potions without him breathing down his neck, especially when said potions would ensure his survival. They had saved his life numerous times, and now he hoped that they'd help Naruto. He knew that the boy had fast regeneration, but it wouldn't hurt to prepare, not to mention Sasuke and Sakura didn't have that advantage.

Harry also had a collection of poisons, but he wasn't sure he should give them to him. Although he had improved, the boy could still be clumsy at times. It wouldn't do if he swallowed a vial of poison instead of healing potion. By the time Naruto was back, his potions were all finished. He poured cauldrons of potions into vials and bottles, labeling them, using both Latin alphabet and katakana for Naruto.

He was glad that there were potions that used herbs only as ingredients, as he didn't think he could find any magical animals here, aside form those that had been put into stasis in at least one of the crates he had taken from his Gringotts' vaults. He had neither the time nor patience to take care of animals of all things.

He shrunk the unbreakable vials and put several of them inside a black velvet box and set it aside on a table, while he put the rest on his own shelves, before he went inside his house to clean himself and perhaps helped Dobby with the dishes.

"Ne, Harry-nii, what're you going to do with Dobby?" spoke Naruto, as he set up the plates. The elf in question perked up, as he flipped an omelet expertly. Several cooking utensils could be seen moving on their own.

Harry poured the chicken soup into a big ceramic bowl and put a heating charm on it, looking pensive. "He could disguise himself as human, but that will attract questions I don't want to answer. Civilians are okay, but we're talking about ninjas in their own hidden village here. It's best that Dobby stays hidden," he said regretfully. The elf's ears sagged. "Of course we can have a private party for the three of us later," he suggested guiltily. Dobby's wide eyes looked at him with hopeful adoration.

"Sure, why not?" Naruto said, knowing how much Dobby looked forward for it. He didn't expect the elf to jump and steal his breath by hugging him tightly. The poor boy was in a daze, as the elf bawled his eyes out, causing Harry to snicker.

"Uh, Dobby, the eggs?" wide eyed, Dobby scrambled to save his cooking. Naruto could only sweat drop at the sight.

0-0 0-0 0-0

"Man, Naruto lives here?" Kiba asked in shock. It was a big residence for just 2 people after all.

"Naruto-kun," Hinata blushed brightly, not noticing the hateful glare she got from her cousin.

"Come on, Akamaru!" Kiba leapt the high wall that surrounded.

"Kiba, that's rud—" before his sensei could finish her talk, the duo was blasted off by something invisible. "Kiba!" the others ran to check him up.

"Ite te te te," Kiba rubbed the bump that was forming on his forehead. "What the hell was that?" he shouted.

Meanwhile Harry felt like he had forgotten to tell the group something, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember it.

"I don't detect any genjutsu," Kurenai said, checking up their surrounding. "Hinata, can you check it up?"

"Hai sensei. Byakugan!" at the same time Neji activated his and at the same time both Hyuugas' jaws dropped. "I can't see the house, sensei! It's like it isn't here," she cried out. The jounins looked at each other anxiously. Was there really something that can deceive the famed byakugan?

"I can't smell anything strange either, Kurenai-sensei," Akamaru barked in agreement.

"Shino?" she turned to her other student who was conversing silently with his bugs.

"…There's something that repels them from entering the area. Even now they feel like they want to go away from here," there was a worried tone on his voice.

"Wow, Harry-san is truly great to be able to keep out intruders!" Lee praised.

"Erm… perhaps we should just ring the bell?" Iruka suggested. They went to the front gate quietly, lost in their own thoughts, except for Lee who was shouting about Harry's greatness. Tenten and Neji were red in the face.

"You know, I heard rumors that there are some ninjas that were sent to the hospital after they tried to jump from some roof. Reckon that they meant this?" those ninjas were sent by the Council, not Hokage, so they didn't know the details and they didn't want the young ninjas to know they were spying on Harry.

Kakashi sighed. "Probably," he said before going back to read his porn book. Kurenai had dragged him along forcefully, so Kakashi had no choice but to follow her. The kunoichi snatched away the book in anger.

"I feet something fishy here!" Anko giggled, much to the exasperation of others. The genins were wondering who she was.

"It's too troublesome," a genin moaned out. Guess who it was?

"Shut up, Shikamaru!" a blonde girl shouted.

They were right in front of the front gate and Sakura rang the bell. A minute later the door was opened by Naruto. The boy was dressed casually: dark blue shirt and baggy black pants. There was a kunai holster on both his thighs.

"Hey, guys," he greeted with a wide smile. Hinata stuttered in the background. "Come in!" he invited them. Unknown to the party (including the clueless Naruto) there was a ripple around the ward that allowed them to enter the residence after Naruto invited them.

"Naruto, you asshole! What the hell was that, huh?" Kiba was all but shrieking.

"Huh?" the boy asked confusedly.

"This, you bastard!" he pointed to his forehead.

"…wow, that's a big lump. You should treat it, Kiba."

"Why youuuu!" he growled, thinking that Naruto was mocking him.

"What the hell is your problem, mutt?" Naruto yelled as he dodged Kiba's attacks, thinking that he went nuts.

"It's your fault that I got this lump!" Akamaru wagged his tail as he watched his master attacking the blond.

"How in the hell it's my fault? It's not like I slammed the gate open in your face!" Naruto defended, he caught Kiba's wrist and swung his body like a rag doll. The Inuzuka boy rolled in the air and landed, crouching on the ground, baring his teeth.

Before he could attack Naruto again, Kurenai spoke frostily, "Kiba-kun," she glared disapprovingly. Said boy gulped. He sent a last glare to the confused, but irritated Naruto, and walked behind his team angrily.

"Naruto, you have truly improved!" Iruka said, trying to defuse the situation. It worked. The boy was distracted.

The Kyuubi vessel grinned. "Of course I am, Iruka-sensei. Can't let Sasuke get all the glory!" the black haired genin scowled.

"Naruto-san, you're such a youth with your burning spirit!" Lee jumped.

Naruto blinked. "…Who are you?" he had no idea who he was. Why was he here? Then again he didn't know several other people in the group.

"My name is Rock Lee and I'm—"

"Why don't we enter the house first before we introduce ourselves?" Iruka interrupted. Naruto nodded and led them to the main house. The ninjas noticed that the house and garden were well kept, but they saw no servant to tend them. Naruto led them to the main house.

"Where's Harry-san?" as they walked down the corridor.

"His room," he stopped in front of a room that faced the inner court garden. "Harry-nii, they're here," he spoke. The sliding door opened to reveal the wizard.

"You're all here, eh?" he shot a warning look toward Anko. "Why don't we go to the hall first, before we start the tour of my weapon rooms? Not all of us know each other." They agreed. After the introduction was over, Harry led them to one of his weapon rooms. Several rooms in the house had been converted to weapon rooms where Harry kept his own crafts or others that he had bought from weapon dealers. As Naruto had been in the weapon rooms before and could enter it as he wished, Harry sent Naruto away to set up the dishes.

"There are 6 rooms that I have converted into weapon rooms. This one is for thrown weapons, that one for blades, and then for blunt short range weapon like tonfa and also heavy artillery like mace, and the next one for miscellaneous weapon while the last one is for experimented weapon that I haven't finalized yet."

The first room was full of kunai, shuriken, bow and arrow, javelin, crossbow, dart, chakram/disc, senbon etc of various shapes and sizes. "I found that it was a waste of time making most of them on my own, so most of the weapons here were bought. I made sure to only pick the best ones I could find." Tenten acted like Christmas had come early. It was too bad the weapons were in display cases; else she would have run her fingers through them. The other ninjas were interested too, as kunai and shuriken were ninja's basic weapon though they had never seen this much variant like in this place, but they weren't as giddy as Tenten.

Hayate paid more attention to the next room, because he was kenjutsu specialist. There were many kinds of blades there. Kodachi, katana, bokken, wakizashi, sickle, spear, long sword, broad sword, rapier, army knife even blades in the shape they had never seen before. There were also different kinds of shields.

"Wow, I didn't know there are these many kinds of blades before," Chouji looked around in awe. Shikamaru nodded. He too was fascinated by these, already calculating the right way to use these weapons, its advantages and disadvantages.

"I usually make blades like these. Most of the weapons in this room were made by me actually. Most ninjas prefer thinner and less weighted swords than I what I used to make though. Come on, let's go, you can see it again later after we eat," Hayate and Tenten nodded reluctantly.

There were tonfa, stick, brass knuckle, gauntlet etc in there. Asuma immediately went to the brass knuckle section, wondering which variant suited him best.

The next room contained mace, huge hammer, metal bat, spiked chained ball etc. "Whoa, I don't think I can even lift it," Ino commented, as her gaze landed on the heavy weapons. "These are more like Chouji's weapon choice," said genin stopped in the middle of his chip crunching.

"Are you implying that I am fat?" he glowered.

"Wh-what? Of course n-not!" she sweated. "I mean you're stronger than both Shikamaru and I, so you must be great if you're using these weapons. Yes, that's what I mean," she gave him her best 'Who? Me?' smile. The others rolled their eyes.

The other room, just like Harry said, was full with miscellaneous weapons that couldn't be fit into one of the rooms. There were things like whip, wire string, poisoned ring, something that resembled fish hook, explosion notes, and smoke bomb. "And that concludes our one hour tour. Hope that it satisfies your curiosity somewhat. Come, I'm sure Naruto has finished. We can talk as we eat. There are some dishes that come from my homeland, you should try them," the fat Akimichi perked up.

True to what he said, Naruto was already done (helped by Dobby, not that the others noticed it) and was currently lounging in front of TV, watching a movie.

"Oh, you guys are done?" he switched off the electronic.

"Hey, where's Anko?" Kotetsu looked around. The jounins groaned simultaneously and they observed Harry cautiously, wondering what his reaction was. To their surprise, their host was smirking, as if he knew something they didn't. They were answered by a shrill scream that rang from the other side of the house. Harry nodded, allowing them to run toward the source.

Behind Harry, Neji activated his byakugan. He could still see tenketsu in people, or seeing 360 degrees, but he couldn't see past the wall! This house somehow had dampened his bloodline. His eyes swept Naruto and he raised his eyebrow when he saw the blonde boy had thicker chakra coils than even jounins. He turned to their host and all thoughts about Naruto were swept from his mind, as he watched in shock the lack of chakra coils and tenketsu in Harry's body. What could it mean?

Anko was rubbing her sore electrocuted butt. Her hair stood up, defying gravity. She glared when she spotted Harry who smirked mockingly at her, ignoring Kurenai's fuss. She had attempted to enter his room after checking for traps, but just as her finger touched the door, it electrocuted her!

"So," Harry started with amused smile, leaning against the wall. "Having fun?"

"Damn you," she hissed angrily.

"Hey, I did warn you, didn't I? I hope you learn from it. The more you try, the more you'll be hurt. It's not my fault that you didn't heed my warning. Come on, I'm famished," he said offhandedly. Kurenai had to restrain her from attacking their host.

"I'm going to enjoy ripping your flesh!" Anko yelled, fist clenching, while struggling against her comrade's hold.

"Anko, stop it!" Kurenai sighed.

The foods and drinks were delicious and it was clear that the guests were quite enjoying it… with the sole exception of one special jounin who was glaring heatedly at the calm blacksmith, while she shoved foods down her throat. The atmosphere was rather tense and no one wanted to start any talk incase she directed her ire to them. The silence were interrupted several times by Hayate coughing like usual. Even Gai and Lee felt awkward.

"ARRGGGH!!" they looked at Naruto who slammed his bowl against the table and stood up. He pointed angrily at the irritated woman. "This is supposed to be a party, damnit! Not a funeral! What's your problem anyway?"

Anko stopped eating. "That's not your business, brat!"

"B-brat?" he repeated incredulously.

"Naruto," Harry called, a smile was plastered on his face.

"Nii-san?"

"It's okay. She just has some… issues. Apparently she failed to understand the meaning of privacy and reaps what she sows," Harry explained, smirking at the woman.

Naruto blinked. "Huh?"

Hinata flinched when Anko slammed her fist against the table. "Issues! I'll show you issues!"

It was really easy to bait her. Harry felt like he was facing Draco Malfoy v. II. The difference was (aside from their genders) she didn't know about his life so she didn't have ammunition against him, unlike Malfoy. He remembered the fond memory of dismembering him and ending the Malfoy line on his generation. Funny… he didn't feel happy when he thought of Tom's death, but Malfoy's death made him pleased. Anyway, it was her fault for trying to pry in his privacy. He was always a private person and it never changed, in fact it had gotten worse after his friends' deaths. And really, she was being very obvious about it; she really should learn discretion. No one blackmailed him and got away with it.

He was baiting her. And she was eating from his hand (not literal, of course). Kurenai wanted to groan.

"A-ano…" Hinata flushed when all attentions turned to her. "F-fight-fighting when ea-eating is r-really bad. We s-should… um," she mumbled the last part, fiddling with her fingers and ducked her head, cowering under the others' gazes. Neji scowled.

Harry scratched his head and sighed. "Don't worry, Hinata-san, I won't provoke her," then he turned to Anko, raising a questioning eyebrow.

The crazed jounin watched Hinata's fearful and embarrassed expression. Damn, she was getting soft. "Fine, bastard."

"Uh-uh, such word is unbecoming for a lady," Harry wagged his fingers. The others sweat dropped when Anko's eyes were burning with rage though she refrained from yelling or lashing out.

Genma leaned against Hayate's shoulder. "Anko as a lady? Pft!" Anko had a fine hearing though, especially when it involved her. The senbon biting jounin was having a glare drilling his head.

"Whatever, you guys all suck!" Naruto muttered and resumed his eating. And he thought he was going to enjoy the party too! Why did Harry-nii have to invite her anyway?

"N-Naruto-kun," the Hyuuga heir bowed her head shamefully thinking that he meant her too.

"Ma maa," Kakashi started. "Why don't we talk about something then?"

"About what?" Ino queried scathingly. Perhaps it was a mistake agreeing with this. Sure the food were great, but she was on a diet, damnit! And the sullen atmosphere didn't improve her mood.

For Shikamaru, speaking was too troublesome, while Chouji was entertained with just the food, so he didn't really care to speak at all. Neji and Sasuke didn't feel like becoming conversationalists anytime soon. Shino were already talking… to his bugs. Kiba was busy shoving foods. Tenten was waiting for others to start it first, while Lee for once didn't have anything in mind to say (read: yell about). Sakura was wondering whether it might be a good idea to excuse herself and go home. Naruto just hoped that the sucky party would end soon or he'd start throwing things, preferably at that livid woman.

"Well, since it's a party to celebrate your entrance to chuunin exams, why don't you ask them about the exam? She did say she would be a proctor for the exam. I'm pretty sure we can squeeze information from her is she isn't willing to talk," Harry grinned. The genins perked up, while the older nin were frowning inwardly, they were hoping that the genins would ask questions about him. People usually loved to solve puzzle, and Harry was such a mysterious guy they should be curious about him. Unfortunately the young man diverted the attention from him perfectly, though whether he was avoiding it or just giving suggestion to the genins was unknown.

Anko found herself bombarded by questions. "QUIET!!!" she bellowed. The solemn and quiet atmosphere returned, hanging above them. "Now," she glared at Harry, "I said that I MIGHT slip something out, but that didn't mean I WOULD!" the blank, yet somehow hopeful stares from the genins were starting to get her really uncomfortable. "Ur… what I mean is… ur…" the other adult nins enjoyed seeing her squirming on her seat uncomfortably.

"Yes?" they chorused.

"God damnit, ask your own jounins about their exams! I have no time to deal with this. That old man might punish me if I really slip out something about it!" She snatched her plate and resumed her eating, ignoring the disappointed groans.

"Just hints, please!" Ino pleaded.

"I'm the 2nd exam's proctor! It's not like you guys will be able to pass the first one, anyway!" she said scathingly. "And don't even ask about the first exam because I don't know. That's Ibiki's area, he is the one in charge," she then smirked evilly, as she turned to Kotetsu. "Say… don't you have a task to do for the first exam?" in seconds, the attentions were shifted and Kotetsu watched the genins warily, afraid that they'd pounce on him.

"…Not really, I am only tasked to weed out the weaker teams first, so Ibiki will have an easier time. Sorry, but that's the only thing I can tell you. Any further then that and I'll get demoted," he cringed, hoping that they'd stop asking him.

"How many parts are there in the exam, anyway?" Sakura questioned curiously.

"Three parts… well that and plus some other unofficial exam parts, like my job is supposed to be. It'll be better if you ask your jounins."

"Kakashi-sens—"

"Unfortunately, Gai and I got our ranks during the war, so I didn't undergo a chuunin exam like you," he cut off. Gai nodded energetically. He would have yelled about his burning youth, if Anko hadn't crushed his foot below the table. He let out a silent cry. Lee was wondering why his beloved sensei acted so oddly.

"You mean you can get chuunin title without entering the exam?" Ino was surprised.

"Desperate time needs desperate measure," Asuma shrugged. "I got my rank from a C-rank mission gone awry. There were some missing-nins involved and my team was deemed worthy."

"Hey, our C-rank mission was blown out of proportion too, and there were also missing-nins involved. Plus we had freed a country from oppression, but we didn't become chuunin," Naruto grumbled.

"That mission in Wave? That was because Wave wasn't involved with us in any way other than being our client. My mission stopped a war from forming against Konoha, even if that wasn't our actual mission. We stumbled upon the information and acted accordingly. My teammates and I almost got ourselves killed. Not a funny experience. What about you, Iruka, Kurenai?"

"Eh? Me? I didn't enter the exam or finish a mission like you, Asuma-san. In fact since I had chosen to be an academy teacher, there was a separate exam that ninjas had to take, whether they were genin, chuunin, jounin or even ANBU. I had taken the exam when I was genin and my rank was upped when I passed it, as the minimal qualification to be an academy teacher was chuunin. Even then I had to become a teacher assistant for 2 years, before I became an official academy teacher."

The genins and even some older ninjas blinked at that revelation. They didn't know about that one.

Harry scratched his head. It was no wonder that Iruka was worried about Naruto. The man actually became a chuunin through a different and safer method.

They then waited for Kurenai. "Although I did become a chuunin by passing the chuunin exam, the situation was different," she then looked apologetically to Hinata, "Remember the tension with Cloud years ago? Konoha hadn't fully recovered from Kyuubi's attack," thankfully none of the genins was looking at Naruto, because the boy had flinched, "—and thus it had lesser qualifications and the exam was easier, because Konoha needed fresh chuunins in case there would be a war against Cloud."

"Tell us about it anyway, Kurenai-sensei," Kiba said. The others nodded in agreement.

"Okay. The first exam, we were tested as a team. Each one of us was given a specific map that, if we put the 3 parts together, would tell us the location where we must gather after being separated from each other within 5 hours. The examiners would disguise themselves as one of use and we had to make sure that we recognized our own teammates. The proctors wouldn't attack us, but would take our maps if we failed to recognize them as not our teammates. Thankfully my team had developed our own unique hand signs and we were able to pass the first part despite the attempts of sabotage from other teams," she mulled and sighed fondly at the memory.

She continued, "In the second exam, we had to pass through a forest full with traps individually for 3 days, none too lethal I assure you, they didn't want us killed and there were medic-nins around to help if we were in dire needs… they'd only came if we failed to pass the exam though. And we had to do it with only basic weapons and basic techniques, so no fancy techniques, as they wanted to see whether we could use them effectively and creatively. We had to retrieve red flags in the heart of the forest. What we weren't told, however, was that from all 75 flags hidden and scattered around, there were only 16 red flags, the rest was camouflaged by genjutsu to appear as red flags. There were still 99 genins around, there were influxes of genins trying to become chuunins that year, so you know what happened. One of my teammates failed. He wasn't with me and he sucked at genjutsu or detecting things like this, so even though he had retrieved a flag, he didn't know that it wasn't red flag," Naruto grimaced. It seemed he had to train his genjutsu. He sucked at it. The last exam was a public tournament, held 3 weeks after the second part was finished. We ninjas had to show off our capability in front of thousands of eyes inside a stadium where we would be judged whether we were worthy to get advanced to upper rank or not. In fact the last part of the exam was usually a public tournament, so perhaps it would be that again this year. Obviously I passed it; else I wouldn't be telling you about it."

"You passed on your first exam, Yuuhi-sensei?" Tenten asked interestedly. A kunoichi like her was her inspiration.

"No, actually that's my second exam. My teammate made a blunder on our first part and we were disqualified," she smirked evilly when she remembered what she did to that rash teammate of hers, rubbing her palms.

"Does that mean that the first exam usually tests our teamwork and then the next one will test us individually?" Shikamaru opened his mouth.

"Well, that's how Konoha and Grass usually did it. I heard it was different in Kiri. No clue about Rock or Cloud; Konoha were and are not exactly in the best terms with them. Sand will follow through the same method like us, but I heard a rumor that since they had lower shinobi population, those who failed their exams had to undergo training for a year of some sorts and they could become chuunin after they passed the training," the genjutsu specialist answered without looking up from her spaghetti. She was staring at it in fascination. It would be her new favorite food after this. She had half the mind to grill the recipe from Harry. "Em… this one is really good," she complimented. "What's its name?"

"Spaghetti," Kurenai tried to pronounce it correctly, but failed.

"Can you give me the recipe for suppa-whatever it is?" she asked. Harry nodded. "Where did you buy the noodle from? It was different from udon or ramen," she frowned.

"Eh, made it by myself actually," he said.

"You mean I can't buy the noodle instantly from the market?" even though she was a woman, she was a kunoichi. A busy kunoichi that shouldn't waste her time on cooking!

"Unfortunately." She groaned dejectedly. The plates of food were slowly emptied; a fifth of it was by Chouji himself. Naruto didn't have to gorge himself, as he could always ask Dobby for food anytime, so he ate slower than usual and took his time, having Harry drill table manners inside his brain, nothing much, just so he would eat like a civilized man, not someone that hadn't eaten for 10 days. He was ticked to know that Kakashi could finish his plate in seconds when people weren't looking and thus didn't see him removing his mask to eat. He wondered if his mouth was a vacuum or something. "I hope all of you came here with empty stomachs, because we still has desserts," Chouji and Kiba cheered (Akamaru was barking, as he got a portion of Kiba's food). Ino and Sakura mourned their ruined diet.

The tension had disappeared and they started to talk amongst them. The jounins eventually forgot their intention to grill Harry, wanting to enjoy the time with their fellow comrades and genins.

"Damn, I can't move," Kiba moaned after he cleared the last dessert, leaning back against his chair. On his lap, Akamaru curled his body lazily. Chouji was petting his stomach; a satisfied smile was plastered on his face. The ninjas were pretty subdued with their stomachs full of food. And even though Gai and Lee spouted their usual crazy talk, they were quieter. Harry and Naruto had refrained themselves from eating too much, as they would have a private party with Dobby. "Naruto, don't think that just because Harry-san is your guardian I will be easier on you," Kiba smirked, looking at the genin beside him.

Naruto snorted. "Say it, when you're fit to fight, baka. Right now you don't look like you can do anything."

"What did you say?" he bellowed, their foreheads pressing against each other.

"I said, you should say it when you can fight, baka. Right now you can't even lift your finger, much less fighting against me. And don't underestimate me, because that'll be the last thing you'll do before I beat you into oblivion."

"Oh, yeah?" Kiba shouted, while his dog was still lying on his lap, undisturbed.

"Ye-ah!"

"Geez, if you children want to blow each other up, why don't you play exploding snap while we adults play pokers."

"What?" all of them turned to Harry who had spoken. They had never heard about those games before.

(AN: let's say that they didn't play card game here, or if there are cards, they aren't the same)

"They are games from my homeland. I'm lucky that I have them with me," Harry walked to a wooden box he had prepared. He took out the card box and the exploding snap. "Here are the rules and how to play it," he said, explaining them.

"Wait, wait, wait, you mean it can truly explode?" as Harry never taught Naruto how to play it, he too was as clueless as others.

Harry nodded with a grin. "Yep, but don't worry it won't hurt you… much," that didn't reassure the young genins, but they played the game nonetheless. The older ninjas were then taught to play poker after watching 1 round of the exploding game. "And Kakashi, kindly remove your mask, so we can see your face?" the genins stopped playing.

"What for?" he was bewildered.

"So we can see your face," Harry repeated.

"No, I know that, but what is the relation with the game?"

"You see, there's this thing we call poker face. We have to avoid displaying our emotion from our face, so the others can't read it. It'll be unfair for us, as you wear a mask and hitae-ate to cover your eye," Harry pointed out. Harry blinked when he looked over his shoulder. The genins were all behind him, eager to see Kakashi's face.

"Oh, alright," he reached behind his back. The genins went closer, high-fiving (AN: is that even a word?) each other. Anko and Gai cheered. They were both really curious to see his face.

"If you reach for your smut book, I'll swat you with it," Kurenai growled.

Instead of porn, Kakashi took out 9 other masks (For Kotetsu, Iruka, Hayate, Genma, Anko, Asuma, Kurenai, Gai and Harry). The others dropped to the ground anime style. "Why don't we even the field?" he smiled victoriously, as the others grumbled under their breaths.

Harry sighed and massaged his forehead. "Naruto, may I borrow your hitae-ate?" he asked, as the others adjusted their own headbands to cover one of their eye. It looked like they were trying to imitate Kakashi… and failed spectacularly.

Naruto silently handed his hitae-ate, still dazed from what had happened.

**TBC…**

I did tell you that this chapter will be the long awaited chuunin exam, unfortunately when I wrote this, I don't expect it to become this long. So chuunin exam will be the next one. Sorry, guys.

I want to have the genin teams bonded to each other right now, instead of after Sasuke defected like in the series. Whether or not he'll do the same thing here, is a secret…actually I still haven't decided it yet (_blush_). And yes, there are still 3 weeks until the exam starts.


End file.
